Dulles International Airport
airport in Dulles, Virginia serving the Washington Metropolitan Area in the United States
Washington Dulles International Airport ( DUL-iss; IATA: IAD, ICAO: KIAD, FAA LID: IAD) is the primary international airport serving Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. It is located 26 miles (42 km) west of downtown Washington, D.C., in Loudoun and Fairfax counties in Northern Virginia.
Opened in 1962, the airport is named after John Foster Dulles, an influential secretary of state during the Cold War who briefly represented New York in the United States Senate. Operated by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, Dulles occupies 13,000 acres (20.3 sq mi; 52.6 km2); IAD ranks fourth in the United States in terms of land area, after Denver International Airport, Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, and Southwest Florida International Airport. Its Eero Saarinen-designed Main Terminal has received acclaim and awards for its architecture.
As of 2024, it is the 24th-busiest airport in the United States, with 27.3 million enplanements. It had more than 20 million passenger enplanements every year from 2004 to 2019. An average of 60,000 passengers pass through Dulles daily to and from more than 139 destinations around the world. Dulles has the most international passenger traffic of any airport in the Mid-Atlantic outside the New York metropolitan area, including approximately 90% of the international passenger traffic in the Baltimore–Washington region.
In 2025, IAD Airport set an all-time record with 29,008,839 passengers served, a 6.4% increase over 2024.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Dulles International Airport” is airport in Dulles, Virginia serving the Washington Metropolitan Area in the United States. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Dulles, International and Airport, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “airport in Dulles, Virginia serving the Washington Metropolitan Area in the United States” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q466835. VIAF identifies the subject as 141946167. The Library of Congress control number is n84134956. Authority coordinates are 38.944, -77.456. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1962, 2024, 2004 and 2019.
Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Dulles International Airport”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Dulles International Airport primary sources, Dulles International Airport archive and Dulles research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Dulles International Airport”?
- Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
- What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Dulles International Airport” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.