President Donald Trump is planning to overhaul Washington Dulles International Airport, and is personally overseeing the project.
Earlier this month, Trump met with half a dozen construction and infrastructure firms in the Oval Office, including AECOM, which is also involved in the White House ballroom project.
During the meeting, executives pitched ideas to revamp the Washington-area airport, the Washington Post reported.
Potential ideas include building new terminals, and doing away with the airport’s people movers and rebranding them as “Direct Jet Transports,” or DJTs—the president’s initials, as well as turning the existing Saarinen terminal into a concessions area.
It comes after Trump last month proposed renaming the airport after himself despite it already bearing the name of former U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.
It would not be the first time Trump has sought to put his mark on a Washington facility. His deputies have pushed to rebrand several landmarks, including the Kennedy Center and the Institute of Peace, after the president.
Trump’s latest effort to overhaul Dulles Airport fits within a broader push to reshape the Washington region. So far, that has included plans for a 250-foot-tall “Arc de Trump,” modeled after Paris’s Arc de Triomphe, and a $300 million, 90,000‑square‑foot, Mar-a-Lago-style ballroom to replace the White House East Wing.
The plans have drawn sharp criticism from preservationists, lawmakers and watchdogs who argue his focus on grand monuments and personal legacy projects is out of step with historical preservation and democratic norms.
Yet his plans for Dulles could find a more receptive audience.
The airport, which serves roughly 27 million passengers each year—including 10 million international travelers—ranks below many major airports in passenger satisfaction despite being the fourth-largest in the U.S. The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which oversees Dulles, had already outlined a plan to overhaul the facility and phase out the people movers over 15 years, but Trump called those plans too slow.
“It’s got a beautiful terminal,” the president said of Dulles at a Cabinet meeting in December. “They have a great building, and a bad airport.”
He added: “We’re going to make Dulles airport serving Washington and Virginia, Maryland, etcetera into something really spectacular. We have an amazing plan for it.”
“Tourists, world leaders, and CEOs from around the world should not be forced to travel through an inefficient airport when they visit D.C.,” Secretary Sean Duffy said at the meeting, adding that Dulles “needs a complete refresh to assume its proper role as the premier international gateway into the capital of the greatest country in the world.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
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