|
Washington Dulles International Airport (IATA airport code IAD, ICAO airport code KIAD) serves the Washington, DC metro-region. It is a hub to United Airlines. It is named after John Foster Dulles, United States Secretary of State under Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The airport is located partly in Chantilly (which has the airport's official address), partly in Dulles on the border of Fairfax County and Loudoun County, Virginia. The airport is west of the town of Herndon.
In 1962, the metropolitan area of Washington, D.C. (with much help from the federal government) opened a large airport (in addition to the then-Washington National Airport) to serve the city and surrounding communities. The airport was designed by famed Finnish architect Eero Saarinen and dedicated by President John F. Kennedy on November 17, 1962. It was the first airport in the world specifically designed for jet aircraft, so many of its architectural features were experimental at the time.
While initially considered a white elephant, Dulles International has steadily grown. The airport chiefly serves, along with Baltimore-Washington International Airport, as the international gateway to Washington D.C.: it also handles most of the city's flights to the West Coast, because of legal restrictions on Ronald Reagan National Airport.
A flight from Dulles, American Airlines Flight 77 was crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
In December 2003, the National Air and Space Museum opened a satellite facility at Dulles, which currently houses a Concorde, the Enola Gay B-29, and the Space Shuttle Enterprise, among other famous aerospace artifacts.
|
|
