The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority today released the 2010 passenger statistics for Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport. Together, Washington’s airports served 41.8 million passengers last year, the first time either airport experienced growth since 2007.

“We are very pleased to see positive growth at both of Washington’s airports in 2010,” said Lynn Hampton, Airports Authority President and CEO. “Even with the economic challenges of the past few years, the Washington region remained one of the stronger air service markets in the country. Our passenger statistics for 2010 are a positive sign that the airline industry has rebounded from this recession.”
 
Reagan National served 18.1 million passengers in 2010, a 3.1 percent increase over 2009. Reagan National welcomed a new airline—JetBlue—in November 2010 with seven daily flights to Boston plus daily flights to Fort Lauderdale and Orlando. Delta also offered new nonstop service from Reagan National to Hartford, Columbus, Jacksonville, Orlando, Miami, Tampa and St. Louis in addition to expanding nonstop service to Boston and Indianapolis. The Airports Authority completed a parking expansion project at Reagan National in early 2010. New levels were added to both daily parking garages with more than 1,400 additional new parking spaces. The Airport now has nearly 9,000 parking spaces.

Dulles International served 23.7 million passengers in 2010, a 2.3 percent increase over 2009. Dulles welcomed several new airlines in 2010, including: AeroSur with weekly nonstop service to Bolivia; Turkish Airlines with new nonstop service four times per week to Istanbul; and OpenSkies, a new airline offering non-stop all business-class service to Paris Orly Airport.

In addition to these new airlines, both Ethiopian Airlines and United expanded international service at Dulles last year and Cayman Airways returned with seasonal service to Grand Cayman. Ethiopian increased its service to Addis Ababa from four flights per week to daily service. United Air Lines introduced daily service to Lagos, Nigeria, daily non-stop service to Accra, Ghana, and added same-plane service to Bahrain on its existing daily non-stop flight to Kuwait.

This increase in international air service helped Dulles reach a new record for international passengers with 6.3 million international passengers in 2010, a 2.1 percent increase over 2009’s previous record.International traffic at Dulles has risen every year since 2003.

The Airports Authority opened the new AeroTrain underground airport train system at Dulles in January 2010. AeroTrain offers express underground transit with less than two minutes of travel time between stations—completely changing the way passengers travel through Dulles. Ten years in the works, the AeroTrain is the cornerstone of the D2/ Dulles Development capital construction program.

Passenger Traffic at Washington's Airports from 2001 to 2010
(measured in millions)

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