President Donald Trump is personally driving efforts to remake Dulles International Airport — and his plans go far beyond trying to put his name on it.
Trump earlier this month hosted about a half-dozen infrastructure and construction companies in the Oval Office, with executives taking turns pitching the president and Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy on their proposals to overhaul the Washington-area airport, according to four people familiar with the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting. The companies — which included AECOM, one of the firms working on the president’s White House ballroom project — laid out ideas to change Dulles’s layout, build new terminals and do away with the airport’s sometimes-notorious shuttles known as people movers, the people said.
Trump will convene companies again Wednesday to hear updated proposals for redesigning one of the country’s most prominent gateways, the people said, as he seeks to fast-track changes to a facility he has derided as “badly designed.”
About 27 million passengers, including 10 million international passengers, travel through Dulles per year, with passengers rating the airport relatively poorly compared with other large airports. Trump officials began discussing changes to the airport last year as part of the administration’s push for a “golden age of travel” and initiative to address the region’s infrastructure.
The White House declined to comment about Trump’s meetings on Dulles but said the administration was focused on improving “the international gateway to our nation’s capital.”
“Dulles should inspire pride and awe in foreign travelers visiting our country and American citizens returning home,” spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement. “The Trump administration is committed to using every tool at our disposal to ensure that Dulles lives up to our nation’s majesty as we seek to both Make America and our Airports Great Again.”
The Transportation Department said it was “exploring a host of public-private partnership opportunities to remake Dulles at the speed of Trump.” AECOM referred questions to the administration.
Trump’s effort to overhaul Dulles is part of his broader plan to remake the Washington region, which includes his stated goal to beautify public spaces and major thoroughfares. While some of the president’s moves have been controversial, such as his desire to build a new White House ballroom and a 250-foot triumphal arch, his early efforts regarding Dulles have won some praise from regular critics.
The Transportation Department has also taken over Washington’s Union Station, a transit hub that connects regional trains and buses to the Metro system.
Trump — whose deputies have moved to rebrand several Washington facilities, including the Kennedy Center and the Institute of Peace, after the president — also proposed renaming the airport after himself last month as part of a funding standoff with Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York), an episode first reported by Punchbowl News. Several House Republicans last year separately introduced a bill to rename the airport, which was named after former U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, after Trump instead.
The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which oversees Dulles, has already begun plans to overhaul the airport and phase out the people movers within 15 years. The shuttles, officially known as “mobile lounges” — widely acclaimed when they were introduced as part of architect Eero Saarinen’s dramatically different design for an airport over six decades ago — can each carry about 100 people and are used to ferry passengers between several of Dulles’s terminals and concourses. Some of the shuttles, which the airport calls “plane mates,” also can dock directly with an airplane.
But Trump officials have deemed the existing plans too slow and inefficient and have sought ways to make rapid improvements to the airport without waiting for Congress to set aside additional funding, said two of the people with knowledge of those conversations.
The Transportation Department last month collected proposals for “revitalizing Dulles,” with about a half-dozen companies making the cut for the Feb. 2 meeting with Trump and Duffy, the people said.
Duffy previewed that meeting at a Transportation Department event earlier that day.
“If you’ve gone through Dulles, it’s not the greatest airport … the ‘people movers,’ not awesome,” Duffy said, as he prepared to head to the White House. “So we’re going to have a conversation about that.”
Trump has praised Saarinen’s architectural vision for Dulles, saying that he wants to preserve aspects of the airport, such as its flagship terminal, while making it easier to navigate.
“It’s got a beautiful terminal,” the president said at a Cabinet meeting in December. “They have a great building, and a bad airport.”
About two dozen companies responded to the administration’s request for proposals, with many incorporating Trump’s ideas and language for a “beautiful” facility. Some sought to appeal directly to Trump’s affinity for branding, such as an idea to rebrand the mobile shuttles as “Direct Jet Transports,” or DJTs — the president’s initials.
One of the proposals presented to Trump and Duffy in the Oval Office this month was from Ferrovial Airports and Grimshaw Architects, which proposed constructing a new terminal, saying that the existing Saarinen terminal would be converted into a concessions area.
“It will provide significant improvements to passenger experience and airport operations and strengthen the airport’s reputation as an outstanding memorable gateway to the nation’s Capital,” according to the companies’ joint proposal. They also proposed “new stations that enable the existing mobile lounges to be retired, substantially improving the arrivals experience.”
Ferrovial declined to comment.
Some Trump officials have positioned the planned changes to Dulles as an initiative with bipartisan appeal, citing widespread complaints about the facility. Trent Morse, a Trump appointee on the MWAA board, has said that the people movers are outdated and even dangerous, citing recent accidents.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, has also called the airport “terrible” and supported Trump’s push to remake it. Cruz in 2024 commissioned a study of air quality inside the Dulles terminal as part of a congressional funding bill.
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