Washington Dulles Airport

The worst experience ever. International terminal is poorly staffed. It takes forever to get from C terminal to A terminal. There are no signs for your flight and the staff does not speak clearly at all. They are also extremely rude. Avoid this airport at all costs or make sure you have plenty of time between connections.

Flying in from Canada my layover was at Dulles International in Washington. The Airport was packed. Airport staff were hardly to be seen. Extremely dirty and you had to go through TSA security to roam around another terminal. If you can avoid a stop over at this airport I suggest you do.

Never again! Only two people checking passports when an Air France airbus arrived with more than 500 passengers. Many people me included missed their connecting flights because it took 3 hours to get through customs. Do not choose this as the gate to USA there are plenty of better airports.

Possibly the worst airport. Staff here are particularly rude. Security and immigration lines are always ridiculously long because they are understaffed. Somehow though they need 3 people to point to one of two people movers to board on (signs clearly state which is for transfers and which are for final destination DC).

This is definitely an airport to avoid. The design has always been peculiar not customer centred (an American analogue to Paris CDG). An enormous amount of money has been wasted building the Aerotrain. When connecting between United flights it takes hundreds of yards of walking to reach a terminal station only to wait and then board for a 20-second ride. Through the attitude that this kind of design expresses to its customers Dulles and United were made for each other. Bring back the mobile lounges!

One of my least favourite airports. This airport has expanded haphazardly over the course of several decades and is poorly designed and laid out. Amazingly the new Aerotrain which shuttles you from the main terminal building to the satellite terminals is no faster than the painfully slow so-called mobile lounges that used to be the sole means of transport between terminals. I always have to allow 45 minutes or more to travel from the drop-off/check-in area to the gate. Several times when arriving on a late night flight I've had to wait 20 minutes or more for the next Aerotrain. Security lines are the longest I've seen primarily because half the security lanes are normally closed similar situation with customs - never enough personnel to man the available counters and as a result lines are commonly 45 minute or more. While Dulles suffers from some irreparable design flaws it would be much better if airport management would simply ensure that they make better use of the facilities they do have - by having more customs and security personnel on hand and by running the Aerotrain at reasonable intervals at all hours to speed transit through the airport.

Not an outstanding airport by any means but much better than Reagan. The signage is plentiful the train system is quick and comes often and generally the place is clean. Check-in is no hassle. In short the place is navigable and gets the job done. However a lot of stairs must be climbed to get anywhere from any of the terminals making a trip even to the baggage claim very annoying. Overall I'd recommend this airport to any Washington traveller so long as they have means of getting to the city later because transit is currently a weak spot.

Customs and Immigration processing at this airport is a disaster. There isn't any planning for international arrivals by the airlines to stagger arrival times. Our last trip through there had 5 747s arriving at the same time and it took us 2 hours to get through this backup of passengers. The customs staffing had only one station open when there was two others available. Avoid Dulles airport for any incoming international flights. If possible use San Francisco airport for incoming international flights.

Arrived from Amsterdam with Continental at about 2 pm with 2 other planes at once there were more then 800 people in the very small and very warm arrival and baggage halls. Customs/Immigrations and baggage control queuing time was more than 4 hours we had only hand luggage but we missed our 3 hour transfer time to Las Vegas. There where only 3 Immigrations officers Desks open and from the 5 baggage control lines there where also only 3 open - a complete mess. We had to wait for hours at the Desk from United/Continental Airways to arrange another flight the next morning to Las Vegas we were put on the waiting list and had to pay for the Sheraton hotel ourself. Never ever had such a bad experience at an Airport the airport shuttle drivers said this happens all the time.

I didn't think it could get worse but the new train system and the amount of walking to get anywhere is crazy. First are the ridiculous security lines - waiting an hour to get through security is unacceptable. The ridiculous extra 15-20 mins of walking up and down escalators to eventually get to the gates. I will do a connection through Reagan next time just to avoid the level of inconvenience that the Dulles inefficiency creates.