DCA logistics
 

I can't find a thread. And this is the first time I've flown out of the DC area.

I have a flight at 18:45 tomorrow DCA-EWR and I have an event at the national press club (529 14th ST, NW) which is suppose to finish at 17:00.

At that time how long should a taxi to DCA take. What is the latest I can arrive at DCA?

I have TSA pre and no checked bags.

It's a 10 minute trip under normal conditions. Can easily take 20-30 min if there are traffic incidents. You could walk to Federal triangle metro and take a blue line train - total time around 28 mins, but that's pushing it, even with pre check.

You're going to be cutting it close if the 14th street bridge is a mess.

You'll be fine. Even with traffic, 14th St is the bridge. Max 30 min to B gates entrance. Under 15 min in Pre Check and 3 min to gates 10-12. Metro is probably iffier during the "Safety Surges."

Although I agree that the Metro is probably not the best choice, the Blue Line is not the way to do it as it has more stops. Take the Red line from Metro Center (2 blocks from the National Press Club, actually closer than Federal Triangle) one stop to Gallery Place. Transfer to the Yellow line to Virginia. 7 stops total (including change), while Blue line is 10 stops from Fed Triangle to DCA.

The Blue line route is a mess, due to the new Silver Line trains having to share the Potomac river tunnel with both Blue and Orange between Foggy Bottom and Rosslyn.

Welcome to the best "major" airport in the Northeast -- close to downtown, very easy navigation, and this being "Congress's Airport" you can get virtually anywhere in the continental US directly. Your schedule should not be an issue; even at its worst it should not take more than 30 mins to get from 14th & F to DCA. (Use a Lyft / Uber instead of a cab; don't bother with Metro.) Typical TSA Pre wait time is under 10 minutes, and the walk to the United gates is less than five minutes from there.

If you need to eat, go toward Gates 20-22 straight ahead past security instead of turning left to the United gates; the options are much better. Also, the United Club is a bit tucked away, upstairs near Gate 11. It's a retro Club, not big but perfectly nice and quieter than most.

Only if you're headed to the eastern half of the US.

http://www.gcmap.com/map?P=&R=1250mi...MX=540x540.jpg

Thanks all. I will jump in a Lyft at 17:00 and hope for no extraordinary traffic jams

Except that on the Metro trip planner, your red/yellow option takes longer than the blue line option.

make sure you hail Lyft standing on the west side on 14th street. It might even be faster to grab a cab at the Willard.

That restriction has gone away. Dulles still has more options for longer flights, but I've flown SFO-DCA nonstop in the last few months and it's a huge win when the schedules work.

Bob

If using Metro, make sure it is operating normally as there are a lot of problems with that system: http://www.wmata.com/rider_tools/met...s/rail_Bus.cfm

That's using two of the very-few beyond-perimeter slots. Mostly no service to the western US, and certainly not direct.

Please follow this to the Washington DC forum.

l'etoile
UA moderator

Your odds of a traffic delay are highest and your odds of waiting for a train are lowest between 5 and 6ish. I concur with the advice about taking the Red Line to the Yellow Line; the views from the bridge are among the nicest in the whole system.

If your EWR flight gets cancelled and you have United Club access, the agents there may be able to put you on Amtrak instead, at which point your have to taxi/Uber/Lyft or Metro over to Union Station.

OP - Although the weather is good today, check flight status carefully. If your flight is substantially delayed or cancelled, do not head out to DCA from the NPC, but head straight to Union Station (5-10 mins by taxi/uber/bus/metro, 20 min. walk) and grab a train. I presume that you are connecting at EWR, so you will need to call UA to have them cancel your DCA-EWR segment so that your onward/return segment(s) don't get cancelled, but you are entitled to that in case of delay/cancellation.

For what it is worth, if you leave the NPC in an Uber at 5:05 (you can now preset the pickup time) and give the address location for the building on 14th Street facing South, it will take 15-20 minutes to DCA at that time of day. With Pre-Check, you will be at your UA gate in 10 minutes (only because the EWR departures are down a long corridor from the checkpoint). Without Pre-Check, add 10-15 minutes for the checkpoint at that time of day (even w. status, because it's DCA and everybody has that).

Amtrak is actually a far easier and better option than the miserable micro-hop up to EWR which is routinely delayed/cancelled because late afternoon ATC results in those flights getting the short end of the stick.

If you do wind up on Amtrak, don't short-change yourself on comfort. It is substantially nicer to take an Acela changing to almost anything including a local commuter on NJ Transit at Metro Park than to take something less pleasant from WAS just because it stops at EWR (which the Acela does not).

Doesn't Alaska still fly DCA-LAX every day? I know they used to.

An hour and 45 minutes before the flight to depart downtown DC? A lot of people would argue that's too much time.

Metro will take at worst, 25 minutes. It's rush-hour, so you are unlikely to wait for a train more than 5-6 minutes.

TSA precheck is highly unlikely to take more than 10 minutes.

Assume 10 minutes to walk from metro to security and 3 minutes from security to the gate - you are likely to be at your gate in 45 - 50 minutes.

The Blue Line trains nominally run every 12 minutes, even at rush hour. Right now, there is a Safe Track surge involving the Blue Line and there have been 30+ minute headways between trains, even at rush hour.

As a daily commuter, I thoroughly believe that there is no such thing as "at worst" when it comes to Metro.

Yes, they have one slot for that route.

As a result of recent federal exemptions, non-stop service is now offered between Reagan National and the following cities:
- Austin
- Denver
- Las Vegas
- Los Angeles
- Phoenix
- Salt Lake City
- San Francisco
- San Juan
- Seattle and
- Portland, Ore.

Yeah I just looked it up. And AA has another DCA-LAX flight later in the day. So two non-stops to LAX alone.

Yeah, OP wants to go to EWR and all he asked is whether he could make his flight if he left the NPC at 5 PM.

For what it's worth, relying on Metro during Safe Track is a mistake. That is particularly true if you consider that UberX will run about $12, maybe $15 with a bit of surge pricing at that time of day.

Uber/Lyft/Taxi are fine normally. But I've had times using them to get to DCA where either traffic or a bad driver took a good bit longer than normal to get there. So as long as it's not the end of the world if you miss your flight, then relax and don't worry about it.

That should be contiguous US. "Continental US" includes Alaska

Actually 3 pairs to/from LAX (AA has 2, AS 1). Full list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald...r_restrictions

Sad how every DCA thread these days seems to come back to the Perimeter Rule and how everyone wants flights to the west coast but Congress won't let us have them :rolleyes:

The perimeter rule has been in effect for 50 years - it is nothing new.

It is quite easy to fly to the left coast - just fly from IAD which is barely 30 miles west.

Exactly. It's a 50 year old relic that no longer serves any purpose other than to protect Dulles and congressional districts 1,250 miles or less from DCA.

There's nothing 'easy' about flying out of IAD.

While I agree it is disingenuous to tell people in the District to just drive out to IAD, as someone who has a base close to IAD I have to say it is a very easy airport. From leaving Reston I am past security and heading to the gate in less than 20 minutes, counting car rental return. PreCheck is always open and never a line more than a few minutes.

Anyhow, it's clearly been posted now that there are flights from DCA to the west coast. You don't have to drive out to IAD, unless you want to go to Europe or certain destinations south of the border.

It didn't serve any purpose but to protect IAD when it was created; that's why it was created.

It continues to drive pax to IAD and is why it will stay. Enplanements are growing very well at DCA and not growing well at IAD; removing the rule will result in less pax at IAD which means the cost of flying out of IAD will increase, decreasing the number of pax, increasing cost, etc., etc.

It doesn't "protect" any congress critter's district even though it does make it easier for (some) critters to slither back and forth from whence they came.

In addition, allowing longer flights would result in many more flights using larger (73x, 319, 320) aircraft that are significantly louder than the regional jets/turbo-props. This will make the locals (who knowingly purchased/rented homes next to an airport or in the flight path) even more upset about the noise.


Sure there are things that could make IAD more convenient, but it really isn't that bad. Complain to the public officials that refused to allow Metro to be underground and in the terminal....

Glad you enjoy it. Please get the message out to your friends/colleagues about how great IAD is. DCA passed IAD in passenger traffic in 2015 so apparently people aren't getting the message.

Yup. Guess it made sense back in 1966.

So..."Dulles sucks...PLEASE help us with artificial government restrictions!"...? You ignore the fact that people prefer to fly out of DCA and want long-haul flights to the west coast.

Not sure what you mean here. Hang out at 35X for awhile and tell me how many of those aren't congressionally influenced.

This is a long standing myth. DCA is slot controlled and you can't swap a commuter slot for a mainline slot. So if the Perimeter Rule was abolished it would result in swapping a within-perimeter jet slot (say to/from DFW, BOS, CLT, ORD, etc.) for a similar slot beyond the perimeter (say to/from DEN, SLC, SEA, SFO, LAX, etc.) with no increase in mainline jet traffic. No one would notice the difference. (Trust me, I would be the first one to complain living under the south departure corridor).

Glad you like it, please convince more of your friends/neighbors to do the same. DCA is starting to get a little crowded. :p

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The only valid justification for the Perimeter Rule is protecting United's domestic feeder traffic and what it would mean to international non-stop destinations and the impact to the DC region if they pulled out of IAD. I get that, but damn I'd like to be able go SAN-DCA nonstop again :rolleyes:

Well duh. DCA is in a large city. IAD is out in the country. And everyone out here does use IAD. It doesn't make any sense to drive in to DCA if you live near IAD. But you said there is nothing easy about flying out of IAD. That's not at all true. I use both airports and there is nothing about IAD that makes it harder than DCA, assuming you are arriving by car. And on the inside IAD is much more pleasant in most areas, especially terminal B which is new with lots of space. DCA has small crowded corridors. That said, I will always use DCA if I happen to be in the District and flying domestically.

It sure seemed to. :) Anyway, in addition to controlling congestion and pushing traffic to the new Dulles Airport, the rule was also instituted to reduce aircraft noise from larger planes for the surrounding community.

Disagree. The rules at DCA require only 11 of the 67 slots to be used specifically for flights of 76 or fewer seat (or 56 and less depending on type of plane) flights. For all of the other slots, except for the GA slots, while they are used predominantly by small planes, there is no requirement for this and could, in fact, be used for ANY size plane. You can bet that the airlines would love to use bigger planes to shuttle more and more pax into these slots.

No, it actually does push pax to IAD and higher pax count reduces enplanement costs/pax. If Congress would allow DCA to subsidize IAD then it wouldn't matter so much.

While it may be true that some airlines use the current slot system rules to their advantage, and that a particular airline makes IAD its hub, this is coincidental to who the actual companies are and not why the rule is there or is retained. If UA left, I believe another will take its place pretty quick. (But then again, I don't run these boondoggles called airlines).

Um...what "67 slots"? Can you please provide a reference for this as I have never heard of it before and would like to learn more.

Probably a moot point anyway as even if airlines could convert commuter into mainline slots, they don't have the gates to support it. Mainline gates are already at or near capacity. There was a thread over on the AA forum a few months back about long delays waiting for gates to open after landing. Any type of ops delay (weather, mechanical) seems to create a cascading delay as there is simply no place to go if the previously assigned gate is still occupied. I've experienced it several times myself and it's not fun.

Actually, MWAA already uses revenue from DCA to subsidize IAD: http://www.businesswire.com/news/hom...-Realigns-Cost
The agreement will also modify the revenue sharing arrangements from surplus cashflow between the authority and the signatory airlines as well as introduce a new formula to subsidize IAD's debt costs that are passed on to carriers using a portion of the surplus revenues derived at DCA.

The totals are not explicitly set out in the law, rather they are determined by the parameters set out in several sections of PUBLIC LAW 112–95—FEB. 14, 2012 and the CFR [14 C.F.R. § 93.123, 49 U.S.C. § 41718(c)(2)(A)(ii), 49 U.S.C. § 41714(d)(1)] as well as FAA implementing policies that sets out the number of operations authorized per hour per size of aircraft.

But after the 2012 changes, it works out like this:
TYPE of Op Max slots (T.O/landing) allowed per hour
Air carrier 37
Commuter ops 11
GA and unscheduled 12
Exemptions 5
Slides 2

Except for a few peak hours DCA does not come close to using all 67 ops per hour so there is room. In addition, for a variety of reasons most of the hourly GA slots are not used.

Agreed, gates are pretty busy, but I do not believe they are at capacity. I will check with people I know there. The new terminal due to open in several years will further alleviate this.

That is true, but it is only a portion of surplus revenue from DCA that can go and I believe is capped at $40 million. Significant to be sure, but not game changing. I did misstate something though - such revenue sharing also has to be approved by the airlines that use the airports, not only Congress.

I've grown slightly more fond of IAD in recent years. Fortunately, I am not a United flyer, so all of my trips into/out of IAD have been on American or Delta.

Terminal B is a pleasant experience. Large, open, airy, and connected to the main terminal via train.

My three gripes on IAD still are: 1) the lack of Admirals club at IAD (which will likely never change), 2) the rat like maze that you have to endure when walking from the garages to the terminals and inside the main terminals, and 3) the lengthy wait times for baggage at the main terminal for checked baggage.

I think that IADs fortunes will turn around once Metro to Dulles is up and running. While IAD is WAY out in the 'burbs when you are coming from downtown DC, I am aware that plenty of other distanced airports (LGW, NRT, etc.), still pull in loads of traffic. For users who are 1) on a budget, 2) transit conscious, or 3) hip, Metro will serve a needed purpose.

I fly each of the big 3, but I don't miss an Admiral or Sky Club at IAD because the BA lounge in B is there and very nice. I don't drive my own car so don't know about long term parking. But for me, flying in International I've never had to wait for bags. They are always there as soon as I arrive. My last time in on AF I was first off the plane and driven right to the immigration hall and through in a few minutes and my bags came out about the same time. It could not have been easier.

Here's some news for this thread. DL is launching a non-stop DCA-LAX with lie flat biz seats!

DL 2036 Los Angeles (LAX) at 8:30 a.m. Washington (DCA) at 4:55 p.m.

DL 1913 Washington (DCA) at 5:45 p.m. Los Angeles (LAX) at 8:30 p.m.

http://news.delta.com/delta-adds-ser...hington-reagan

Interesting...they're reallocating one of the beyond-perimeter SLC slots to LAX. Also starting 1 new IAD-SLC round trip.

It will be interesting to see if/how AA responds to the lie-flat seats.

So now we're up to 4 DCA-LAX per day with some pretty good capacity (3 738's and 1 752). ^

To anticipate the next topic..."I want [insert airline here] to fly to [insert destination beyond 1,250 miles from DCA here]"

In the byzantine set of congressional/DOT regulations associated with the Perimeter Rule (which restricts flights to/from DCA to 1,250 miles) there are 4 "wild card" slots that were awarded to the 4 major carriers in 2012:

US: SAN (changed to LAX after the AA merger)
AA: LAX
UA: SFO
DL: SLC (this is the one being changed to LAX)

These 4 slots can be changed anytime to any place. All other flights (including those already operating beyond perimeter) require government approval to change.

DL already had a SLC slot from prior congressional/DOT allocations. To start DCA-LAX they gave up one of the 2 SLC slots reluctantly and moved the service to IAD.

I'm hoping that AA upgrades one of the AA flights to a 752 with the new config. I believe there is enough high value $$$ to support paid F for that route.

What kind of a discount do the Congress-critters get from airlines? Quid pro quo?