GUWonder

If only it were that simple….. but it probably isn’t.

While WMAA is again kicking the can down the road and these things have an element of being penny wise pound foolish over the longer term, given the circumstances applicable for major capital projects to be undertaken at heavily utilized facilities and crowded areas across this country, what else is to be expected when we are not a China or India willing to bulldoze over whatever and whomever stands in the way, are not chock full of cheap labor (both skilled and unskilled), lack a willingness to riskily cut corners knowing that accountability for life-endangering mess-ups risk massive court-ordered financial penalties and being put out of business?

Would selling IAD to a private company to own and operate make its future any better? Doubt it.

DELee

A quick dig on Google shows that the mobile lounge/passenger transfer vehicle was designed by Chrysler with the bodies built by the Budd Company based on specifications by Eero Saarinen - in a day when passengers would have to walk out to the tarmac and climb stairs in whatever weather happened to be on the airfield (Mobile lounge - Wikipedia). The lounges and plane-mates built in the 1960s enabled passengers to get delivered directly to and from their aircraft and avoid the challenges of weather, stairs, etc. But all of that was before jet bridges came into existence and made Saarinen's vision of shuttling passengers to/from aircraft a bit outmoded. So the Budd Company is out of business and likely Chrysler didn't want to get involved with any of their mechanical and chassis configurations from the 1960s (Truck Trend Legends: The Mobile Lounge (motortrend.com)).*

Anyway, folks are welcome to ask the folks at Brookville Equipment Corporation what their plans are in the refurb of the two lounges in question.

David

p.s. The plane-mates were built between 1971 and 1981 (Dulles mobile lounges here to stay, but they might go electric - WTOP News).

tods27

The master plan has a new terminal that connects to the C rail station, then a separate, new terminal will be on the other end of the U that the train makes, so yes, they will basically split C and D. I was answering a question about why they are spending money on the mobile lounges instead of building a D terminal for the train (essentially the same thing they did with the C terminal for the train).

LHCVG

I had actually forgotten about the electrification plans already in progress for the IAD equipment (I do recall the Dominion involvement from your linked article); that seems ideal given the use case regardless.

But to the above about the Chrysler and Budd lineage, I have a little bit of sympathy for what MWAA says it will cost for the structures and fittings aspect and the vendors willing to do it likely demanding usury prices for same. I'm not saying redesigning them is necessarily practicable, but I tend to presume this kind of thing will "always" be an eye-watering number.

Section 107

remember it is MWAA (not WMAA, and certainly not WMATA - the entity that runs Metrorail and Metrobus) - which is why they prefer to be known as the Airports Authority - but I digress.

Here are the details of the solicitation: Microsoft Word - RFP-20-23657A - STATEMENT OF WORK.doc (mwaa.com)

and all the RFP documents are here: mwaa.com - RFP-20-23657A: Rehabilitation and Upgrade of Plane-Mate and Mobile Lounge Vehicles, IAD

Good info in there on how the project is structured. The first two are pretty much "proof of concept" then it will be 6 units at a time as ops allows. Over the entire project, the cost per unit is ~$3.3m for 49 units. (A journalist never let facts get in the way of a preferred narrative, right?).

Note that the MWAA mobile lounge division techs have pretty much been fabricating almost all parts in-house for well more than 10 years as there is no OEM support. The engines were last refurbished almost 20 years ago. All new engine packages are needed.

GUWonder

Is this guy

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Potter

still the head of the MWAA?

That would seem to be a long tenure to be in charge of the airports.

LHCVG

Oh MWAA is very much "that" kind of organization! There was a major travel scandal about 10 years or so ago that was quite entertaining. TL;DR IIRC was that numerous MWAA folk were doing their best Clarence Thomas impression with travel industry types (convention & business bureaus and the like) and taking excursions that were far out of bounds of the organization bylaws.

Section 107

Potter, the former Postmaster General, is still the President and CEO of MWAA. He was hired in the wake of the nepotism, contracting and myriad other scandalous activities that were investigated by the FBI and Congress and sometimes correctly documented by the Washington Psst and other news outlets. He has stuck around longer than a few of the previous CEOs because the Board believes he has shepherded MWAA quite well through the last 10 years or so. But, in some ways and not others, meet the new boss, same as the old boss - maybe just a little smarter about it. He also brought a host of USPS "wunderkind" with him to MWAA - which gave insight and clarity to some folks as to why the USPS has the reputation that it does. Which now has rubbed off on MWAA.

The travel scandal - was primarily a Board member using MWAA to pay first class fares for personal business /vacation trips. Lots of nepotism in hiring practices - especially in hiring a) direct family members, and b) "nieces" (hee hee) of sitting DC Councilmembers to jobs for which the candidate did not meet the minimum qualifications (or to jobs with no position description at all) were wholly unqualified; time grifting; hiring former Board members to no-show jobs at high-six-figure salaries and lying to health insurance companies about pre-existing conditions. Oh, and lots of contracting shenanigans, like hundreds of millions of dollars in no-bid contracts to board members, employees, and to companies run by family members of employees. One executive was allowed to resign in lieu of being fired and they let him take thousands of dollars of corporate artwork (which he had MWAA purchase from his friend's gallery).

Here is the fun reading of the DOT IG report: http://www.oig.dot.gov/library-item/5979


it is a much better organization now with an organizational culture more dedicated to actually being stewards of the public asset. Of course, since not a few executives have as their only corporate experience that of working for USPS, there is still lots of room for improvement. (but really, what organization that really has no serious, accountable oversight body, couldn't improve?)

GUWonder

That link won’t work, so do the manual search at https://www.oig.dot.gov/ to get the USDOT IG report.

Maybe this link will work to get the PDF:

https://www.oig.dot.gov/sites/defaul...%2012-3-12.pdf

Section 107

Thanks!

GUWonder

The $2 flat fare for weekend fares and after hours fare on weekdays is quite a deal to get to/from IAD, but the service would be better if the airport would do a better job with the up-time of the moving walk ways to get between the IAD metro stop and the terminal building.

DELee

100%.

David

Section 107

Absolutely (depends on the amount of time involved) on the first. The second is actually by design - part of the corporate wellness initiative, extended to customers!

DCA writer

MWAA CEO Jack Potter made a 35-minute appearance at the Oct. 17 meeting of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Transportation Committee, and it was surprisingly info-dense about upcoming IAD developments:

• The Tier 2-East concourse (seen in the renderings below from the capital-projects presentation at the Oct. 18 MWAA board meeting) should soon be something you'll be able to see under construction as your plane taxis past its site above the current "C" Aerotrain stop--“We’re hoping to break ground in, hopefully, the next month,” Potter said--with entry into service in 2026. This $580 million project will have gate space for seven widebodies, 14 narrowbodies, or some mix, and Potter said during Q&A that United plans to move some of its evening bank of international departures to those gates.
• The longer-term plan for IAD, shown in the second slide from the capital-projects presentation, envisages complete replacement of C/D moving west from the Tier 2-East project--plus replacement of the low-A gates with a larger concourse, a connector structure between A/B and the Main Terminal, and an E concourse aligned with the midfield control tower.
• That connector will include an FIS, which Potter said will lead to the closure of the existing IAB: “We’re going to move the international arrivals into that facility, so people will be connected—no longer will you have to take a mobile lounge there.”
• Potter said that "“all of our international flights” will move to the expanded A/B concourse, which doesn't make sense given how many international United flights already operate at IAD. And how past renderings of Tier 2-East have shown a glassed-in upper level like what's at EWR C that leads arriving pax to that terminal's FIS.
• There's already a roughed-in Aerotrain stop below the future site of the E concourse that Potter said only needs escalators, elevators “and some finishes.”
• During Q&A, Potter answered the who-pays-for-this question: “We’re very close to signing an agreement with the airlines, on top of that $580 million, another $6 billion investment in Dulles Airport over the course of that time” to fund the above projects. Unclear if that will be accompanied by federal funding, but I can't imagine how it wouldn't.
• He also said that United plans 25% growth at IAD over the next five years, with more than 1,000 new jobs coming there as well.

futuramadramallama

If I'm understanding the colours properly, this is:

• grey, existing
• teal, to be renovated
• blue, would be completely new

Interesting how much more space there is to grow terminals. Airports like SEA, LHR, and LAX would be over the moon for this kind of extra space.