| Dulles International
Airport Opened in 1962 |
by
Peggy D. Vetter
Observer Staff Writer
|
| Dulles International Airport was inaugurated with great fanfare on Nov. 17,
1962 by President John F. Kennedy and former President Dwight D. Eisenhower. |
| Thousands of people came to view the award-winning terminal building designed
by one of the world’s foremost architects, Eero Saarinen, and situated in
isolated splendor on 10,000 acres in rural Virginia, 25 miles from Washington. |
| Investors, landowners and business people waited with great expectation for
the financial benefits and growth that would be drawn to the Dulles area by the
presence of the new airport. They waited for months. They waited for years. |
| They had prepared a feast, even built a new road for easy access, and nobody
came. |
| Headlines on a collection of clippings taken from the Washington Post in 1967
tell the whole story: “Dulles, A City Of Silence,” “Limited Flights
Keep Dulles Quiet,” “Jet Set Still Shuns Dulles,” “Lonely
Road to Dulles,” and “CAB Probers Urge Voluntary Curb of Flights to
National.” |
| “Dulles Airport was acquiring a reputation as a white elephant,”
said Hal Launders, a charter member and former president of the Committee for
Dulles. “It had plenty of critics, not many supporters and even less passengers
or cargo traffic.” |
| Casting around for ways to promote Dulles, Dan Mahaney, who was airport manager
in 1966, called Charles Solkey, president of the nearby Herndon Chamber of Commerce,
George Hammerly, president of the Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce, and two
representatives from the Washington Board of Trade to meet with him at the airport
to assess the problems and enlist the aid of area citizens, organizations and
local government officials. |
| Within a month, Launders said, that original group had grown to 26 and The
Committee for Dulles (CFD) was launched. |
| In the 25 years since then, the Committee has drawn membership and financial
support from the Chambers of Commerce in Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William and
Arlington Counties and the Town of Herndon; the Washington Board of Trade; and
municipalities such as Alexandria, Fairfax City, Herndon, Leesburg, Falls Church
and Manassas. |
| Membership has represented a wide spectrum of airport and airport area business,
industrial, research and professional firms, trade organizations, landowners and
developers. |
| Every major airline that has used the terminal has been represented, as well
as allied companies in the air transport field whose interests lie in the utilization
and growth of Dulles. |
| Paul Reiber, a retired attorney and former CFD president, remembers two issues
in which the group became involved. “The first was in 1966 when the state
come up with the idea of taxing the fuel used by airlines at Dulles. We fought
that in the legislature and won.” |
| The second victory he particularly remembers was when the Committee went to
the state Legislature and argued in favor of allowing the British to operate the
Concorde out of Dulles. “We won that one too,” he said. |
| “We tried several things to stir things up in the early years. We tried
to get the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) to allow the same freight rates at Dulles
as in New York,” Reiber said. The CFD and the Fairfax County Economic Development
Authority together sued the CAB to get the same rates and lost. They took the
case to the Circuit Court of Appeals and finally to the U.S. Supreme Court, losing
both appeals before giving up. |
| The Committee testified before Congress and other federal and state agencies
on a host of issues vital to the interests of the airport. It encouraged the relocation
of industry to the area, supported the shifting of flights from National Airport
to Dulles Airport, supported construction of the Dulles Toll Road for use by area
commuters, and influenced the addition of more parking facilities. |
| From the beginning, the Committee for Dulles worked to get funds from the
State of Virginia to promote Dulles, but to no avail. |
| In the mid-1970s, nearly 15 years after Dulles Airport opened, “you could
have bowled in the main terminal and not hit anyone,” Reiber said. |
| What flights there were, arrived and departed in the early morning or during
the evening. In mid-afternoon, a visitor’s footsteps echoed loudly in the
terminal, which seemed more like a ghost town than the international airport for
the nation’s capital. |
| The Committee for Dulles spearheaded a drive for state funds, meeting many
times with representatives of the Virginia Department of Aviation (VDA) and the
FAA. Their efforts finally bore fruit and in 1980 the state agreed to fund the
opening of a branch office of the VDA at Dulles. Vincent Rivelese was hired to
direct the new office. It was not a minute too soon. |
| The rumble of the approaching tidal wave of new residents, businesses and
office workers could be heard as it advanced toward Western Fairfax and Loudoun
via Route 7, Route 50 and the Dulles Airport Road. They met with a clash at Route
28 and Dulles Airport and the long-awaited boom was on. |
| The Dulles Task Force was set up in 1981. The VDA branch office was closed
in 1982 and Rivelese went to work as executive director of the Task Force, which
operates on a grant from the General Assembly and private sector donations, working
under the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. |
| “The Task Force brought a lot of influence to bear,” Reiber said.
“They accomplished what the Committee for Dulles had set out to do.” |
| In recent years, the goals of the Committee for Dulles have become more diffused,
Reiber said. “We appeared in Richmond to support extension of the Toll Road
to Leesburg and to support the Western Bypass, which is essential to provide another
access to Dulles.” |
| Leslie Tuck, CFD president in 1990, spearheaded the effort to bring the Smithsonian
Air and Space Museum Annex to Dulles, a move supported by the Smithsonian staff. |
| Another initiative during Tuck’s tenure, was to set up DATA, the Dulles
Airport Transportation Association, directed by Sidney Steele. The Committee provided
administrative facilities until DATA became organized and funded. |
| The Committee supported the creation of the Route 28 special tax district
that allowed improvements to that road, supports affordable housing in the area,
and joined in the recent effort to attract the United Airlines Maintenance facility
to Loudoun. |
| When Hal Launders was president in 1978, he noted that although the airport
had not grown as rapidly as anticipated, “with the passenger projections
forecasting an increase from 1.3 million in 1976 to 9 million in 1995, the growth
pace is accelerating and the Committee’s plans and programs are being designed
to keep apace.” |
| Those figures appeared overly optimistic at the time, but fell short of actuality.
Soon to begin its 30th year of operation, Dulles served 10.4 million travelers
in 1990 and is expected to handle nearly twice that number annually by the year
2000. |
| It has taken 25 years from those bleak days of 1966, but studies indicate
that Dulles now annually generates more than $1.6 billion in traceable economic
activity to its vicinity. The Committee for Dulles can well take some of the credit
for their contributions to that growth. |
