Report: The New AeroTrain at Washington-Dulles IAD

On Thursday evening, I flew home to LAX from IAD. This was an eventful trip because (1) my upgrade didn't clear, the first time that's happened in several months, and (2) I rode Dulles' new "Aerotrain" for the first time.

A bit of background: Washington Dulles International Airport has three terminal buildings. When you pull up to the airport, you enter the main "Z" terminal. That's where all the ticketing/check-in counters are, where TSA security is, and it's where you'll depart if you're flying a select few international flights and if you're hopping on a US Airways Express flight to Charlotte. All the other flights depart from terminals A and B (which share one "midfield" terminal) or terminals C and D (which share another "midfield" terminal).

These midfield terminals are basically just buildings that are not physically connected to the main terminal building. For many years, you got to them by hopping on a "mobile lounge", which is basically a giant bus with seats inside that look vaguely like a mini version of a gate waiting area. These silly looking things are 54 feet long, and a bit more than 15 feet wide, and their mounted on a scissor lift that basically raises the thing to the level of the terminal for passengers to get on and off.

(Alternatively, Dulles also features "plane mates", which are basically just specially-designed mobile lounges that connect directly to airplanes. This allows an airplane to park away from the terminal at special spaces called "hard stand." The "plane mates" take passengers directly from planes at these remote parking spaces to the main terminal.)

This entire system was designed before the advent of jet bridges, and before the design of the modern airport. The jet bridge allows airplanes to park right next to a terminal gate, and for passengers to walk down the tunnel from the plane to the building.

For the past several years Dulles has been trying to catch up with modern times. They've been building an underground people mover system (basically, a train) that would allow passengers to move themselves from the Z terminal to the disconnected outer terminal buildings. This train system, when fully functional, will basically make the mobile lounges obsolete.

So I arrived several days earlier to IAD and rode a mobile lounge from the B terminal to the main terminal building. When I arrived on Thursday to take my flight home, the new train system — dubbed "AeroTrain" — had been inaugurated, and I got to use it to get from Z to B.

All that background information serves to inform my report on riding the train, which basically boils down to this: It's nothing special.

The remarkable thing about the train system is that it is totally unremarkable. After going through TSA security, you take an escalator down into the train station, where trains going in each and every direction arrive every few minutes. Automated doors open, you hop in, and the train takes you to the terminal. The ride is quiet and smooth, and the whole thing is totally automated. You arrive at the terminal, the doors open, you hop out and take an escalator up to the main level. End of story.

Basically, IAD basically operates just like the trains at ATL and MIA. And that would make sense, since they all use the same kind of train system. It also feels a lot like the trains at DFW, LAS, DEN, JFK, and the Getty Center in Los Angeles. In other words, IAD's train system makes it feel like any other airport.

I don't have any philosophical ruminations on the modernization of IAD. I'll leave that to the United folks who fly in and out of that airport on a regular basis. As an AA flyer who only occasionally flies in or out of Dulles, I have to say that the airport feels a little bit easier to manage.

Some pics below.

Take the escalator down to board the train: