mia

Do people tend to arrive early for DCA departures? It always seemed to me that it was the quintessential just in time airport, due to the close proximity to the working town.

esc2476

For me, it depended on the time of day. If I had a mid-morning departure, I would get to the airport early and try to do work for a bit before my flight. I work in Northern Virginia, so even for an afternoon/evening flight, I would generally leave extra time and catch up on work if I am early. I will probably keep the same habits when I travel for work again (hopefully this summer).

I can see folks coming from DC could be a different story (though traffic within DC can be unpredictable).

EDIT: I generally spent 30-60 minutes in the Sky Club when I used that.

ChurnieEls

I would agree the attraction of National is the ease of access (and I do wonder if the TSA rearrangement will result in some throughput issues), however I think the Centurion and a brand new Admirals Club will be very much a case of 'build it and they will come'.

Particularly in the case of the Centurion, you have a lot of younger adults on pretty high salaries that enjoy the insta vacation life, the instagram stories of lounge cocktails in the Centurion will precipitate more Platinum cards in the region - a crowding feedback loop if you will. I would posit that this demographic is exactly who Amex are trying to target, I think the Platinum card has stuffy boomer connotations that the Centurions are helping to shed.

chrisny2

I wonder who the consulting chef would be. Would be great if it's Jose Andres!

GUWonder

Speaking of the pre-2002 period while I used to be a very frequent commuter on the Shuttle flights connecting LGA with DCA (and often flying DCA-ORD/MSP/MKE too), I used to mostly leave home or work in DC or Arlington about 30-38 minutes (if not even a bit less than that) before flight departure from DCA; and I almost never had a problem getting to the gates on time as a carry-on only passenger when doing that. For the first months from DCA reopening after 9/11, it was still pretty reliable for me to do the same (or even with less time). Once the TSA came into the picture post-9/11 and then after travel out of DCA picked up in the years that followed, eventually there were enough messes for me at DCA related to the security screening process that I ended up having to change my patterns and pad in a lot more time unless willing to risk missing the intended flight. Add in the post-9/11 "right-sizing" of capacity and what it meant to for getting on my way out of DCA (and making potential connections) in the many years since, and the amount of time I started spending in DCA lounges jumped up big time for me. And I say this even as someone who's been most commonly getting PreCheck since PreCheck got started.

Road traffic in and around DC has gotten much worse in more recent years (pre-pandemic), and that too means heading to the airport earlier than used to be the case. Even those with the free DCA parking spots seemed to show up at DCA earlier in 2019 than they or their current equivalents would do so in the 1990s.

In other words, it's less of a "just in time" airport than it used to be. The DCA standby lists in 2019 could be very brutal ... especially for those who had low or no airline elite status. I say that to give a window into how missing a flight out of DCA could be a big inconvenience since even "the next flight" has tended to be less available than it used to be in the early 2000s.. [Upgrade lists out of DCA at the tail end of the work week in 2019? I won't get started on that. ]

I wouldn't be surprised if the DCA Centurion lounge ends up being the most popular -- and most often most crowded -- lounge at DCA upon air travel returning to even two-thirds of the 2019 levels. I would be very surprised if it turned out any other way.

Thinned out route networks and network schedules during this pandemic are what has some of us with longer average lounge visit times in 2020 and 2021 than in 2019. I suspect I'll be having longer average lounge visit times at airports in 2022 than I've had in 2020 (and 2021 so far).

Even as DCA is mostly an O&D airport, a lot of people flying out of DCA are flying out of DCA to make connections elsewhere. They may turn out to be even less willing to miss their flights out of DCA in an era of thinned out networks and network schedules than previously -- and that too would mean they show up earlier at DCA than would otherwise be the case. Add in the attraction of the included food and drinks in the Centurion lounge at DCA and the DC area's demographics, and I think this lounge is going to be a real crowd magnet.

DCAproducer

This CL will be a great addition and they're locating it close to DL's gates, which makes a lot of sense. DL's SkyClub has grown over the years and DL put a lot of money into it a couple of years ago. In the evenings it can get quite crowded.
It will be interesting to see how the two coexist.

And as other have mentioned, once the work at DCA is done, National Hall will be past security.

esc2476

Part of me is sad about that because a few times I brought the kids to watch the airplanes on a cold weekend day. On the other hand, when I am traveling for work, it will be nice to be able to switch piers.

Maxwell Smart

OT:
Hey GUWonder,
FYI I was trying to send you a PM on an unrelated topic, but your PM mailbox is full.

dayone

+1.

MSPeconomist

Ever since my (NW->DL) flights moved from the old PMNW concourse, I think of DCA as one of the worst USA airports for potential TSA delays, even with GE/PreCheck. Taking the Metro to the airport avoids traffic delays (and therefore is often faster than an taxi), but the lines can be horrible for no apparent reason.

It will be nice to have a Centurion lounge for variety and to enable me to escape from the (IME usually) crowded SC at DCA.

BTW, if someone is trying for standby, it would be better, if possible, to use the lounge of the airline they hope to fly rather than a third party lounge, especially if it's far from the gates.

ChurnieEls

I've the complete opposite experience with DCA, granted it is an airport where CLEAR or elite priority makes a difference.

BWI on the other hand... as George Clooney says in Up In The Air, I've never seen a stroller collapse in less than 5 minutes.

LDNConsultant

I agree, DCA has been super easy with Pre Check + Clear where I would clear in less than 10 minutes in most instances ~~

esc2476

I was at DCA today (it is my home airport) and had a few minutes to look. I did not see any evidence that the building that will house the lounge has started to be built. I could have been looking in the wrong place, however.

ironmanjt

Can we have a "Centurion Room" like in MEX and GRU? Either that, or they'll all be gobbled up by families...

m907

Has there been any news on this recently?