Originally Posted by
narvik
They've been doing that a lot recently: routing to/through IAD instead of EWR for quite a few East Coast airports. Problems with gate availability at EWR being cited as one of the reasons, IIRC.
As much as EWR gets a bad rap, connecting through IAD is really not that ideal....although to be fair, I haven't actually tried it so I really shouldn't knock it!
The actual connection at IAD is pretty easy--easier than at EWR IMHO. Now, the
experience connecting is not... the midfield concourse is such a dump, and if you're going A->C or v/v (as is often the case when going mainline-to-UX, particularly single-class UX), it means taking the train and a quarter mile walk to the C concourse.
I think the flow control, gates, etc., are all reasons they've been moving these to IAD. I wish they'd go ahead and add more banks at IAD and get us up to the pax levels they have cited as necessary to investing in the new midfield concourse; we're well short of it so far, and UA is really the only option to get it built due to the percentage of traffic they control at IAD.