Checking In at Dulles
 

If you park longterm at Dulles, you ride the shuttle bus and are dropped off at the entrance to the lower level. Then you have to find your way upstairs and find your airline's check-in desk.

I use Dulles no more than once or twice a year and always get turned around once or twice in the wrong direction before finding my airline. Are there signs I am missing somewhere along the way from the basement up the escalator or on the upper level that show the way to each of the Dulles airlines? It seems as though the set-up is fine if you are dropped off on the upper level but the parking buses drop off downstairs. What am I missing?

Marker, you are not missing a thing. IAD is one of the most time-consuming airports to use. Between the infamous people-movers and the long rides to/from parking it is always wise to add about 20 minutes to your schedule to deal with all the mess. Perhaps the addition of the new parking garage and the new underground links between the concourses will help. I guess we will have to wait until 2015 to find out. http://www.flyertalk.com/airports/ft...forum/wink.gif

The parking shuttles do drop off departing passengers on the lower (arrival) level. They do this so they can pick up arriving passengers at the same time. Otherwise arriving passengers would have to get their luggage and go upstairs by the check-in counters to get a bus. Or they would have to have the busses drop off on the upper level and then drive all the way around to return to the lower level to get arriving passengers.

I find it pretty easy to get off the bus and come inside to catch an escalator to the upstairs check-in counters. Admittedly, the signage is not very good.

[This message has been edited by geo1004 (edited 07-18-2001).]

I live about 2 miles away from Dulles but do almost all my flying out of Reagan National or BWI.

At Dulles, you wait for a bus to get from your car to the main terminal, struggle upstairs to the check-in area, and then you wait for ANOTHER bus to get from the main terminal to your flight. And then the whole thing is reversed when you return, and if your flight gets in around midnight or later, it can sometimes be as much as a half hour waiting for each of these bus runs. Add the waiting time for baggage claim (remembering that the baggage handlers have to drive a mile to get your bags from the plane to the claim area), and you've likely spent more time in the airport than in flight.

My favorite was when I took a USAirways commuter flight a couple of years ago that landed at Dulles. A bus picked us up at the plane, and dropped us off at one end of the midfield terminal. Then we walked almost all the way to the other end of the midfield terminal, where we waited for another bus to take us to the main terminal. Then we went downstairs, waited for our luggage, and then waited for another bus to take us to our car!

Dulles's 21st-century architecture is more than offset by its 19th-century functionality.

Actually, 19th century functionality would put everything within walking distance. Buses didn't exist back then! http://www.flyertalk.com/airports/ft...orum/smile.gif

Ideally, a large airport should have trains or walkways connecting everything.

In the original Dulles, there was no middle terminal. Most planes boarded from main terminal to people mover to plane. A few boarded from gate to tarmack to plane.

I prefer the people-mover/bus system of many of the European airports to the mile walks at many of the US airports, although it seems to me that some European airports are extending gates out miles and miles, and creating great billboard opportunities.

This worked pretty well back in the 70s and 80s, since there wasn't so many travellers and they were in less hurry (or so it seem, but I could be wrong). It was rather nice--I remember the mobile lounges when they had real seats that were pretty comfortable and they didn't try to cram everyone in there. Nowday, moble lounges do not fit well in today's air travel rush. However I still enjoy the lounges since it give me a chance to check out the planes as we ride along. :-)

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UA PremExec (2001)
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You are not missing a thing, marker. From downstairs, there's little signage.

Remember the following rule:

If you are flying United, enter near the cab-stand at the left of the terminal (as you are facing it), and the check-in area will be on your left at the top of the escalator. If you are flying most everyone else, you enter at the cab-stand on the right of the terminal, and most of the desks are up the escalator on your right (but not all).

Tom

About those mobile lounges.

Certainly, I hate them. You generally wait about 5 minutes to for it to leave (they post time till departure outside the lounge). Then it has to trek across the active taxiways, stopping for aircraft and various other vehicles -- can take a couple minutes or fifteen.

I was sitting next to a UA 777 captain in F on an ORD-IAD flight this morning who told me that in customer surveys the lounges never make the list of complaints -- that if you survey people in the airport, everyone hates 'em, but when filling out surveys people never list the lounges. Grr. http://www.flyertalk.com/airports/ft...orum/frown.gif

I traveled almost every week through Dulles Airport between 1988 and 1999, and was never asked to fill out a customer satisfaction survey. Nor have I ever seen any customer satisfaction surveys being handed out. So I'm not surprised that mobile lounges have never been mentioned. I'm also not surprised that, from a customer-centric point of view, Dulles is one of the worst airports in the United States.

Oh, come on now, it's not that bad. I don't like the people movers either, but I'd much rather ride one of those than spend 20 minutes trying to run through ORD or LAX to get from one terminal to another!

The mobile lounges are definitely better than the walk in ORD from mainline to Express from C1 to F12. http://www.flyertalk.com/airports/ft...orum/frown.gif

For your convienence, the folks at IAD have replaced the short walk from security to the mobile lounge gates with a long walk. It looks like all flights are now from the mid-field terminals. Used to be that puddle-jumpers left from A in the main terminal. Now the A/B concourse is used as the death march to the mobile lounges.

A few "puddle-jumpers" still leave from the T gates in the main terminal (the A gates were never in the main terminal). Those remaining T gates will be demolished within a month or so. New T gates (east side of the control tower) are under construction, but won't be in service for some time yet.

The A gates will be entirely Independence Air by the end of August. United Express flights will be leaving from various C, D and (mostly) G gates.

I guess I don't understand the complaints about IAD. Have you ever used O'hara, or Miami, or DFW, let alone LHR, FRA, MUC, BRU ZHR? Even PHX was not so close. The walks are unblievable.