News & Politics  |  Travel

Reagan National Airport Is Better Than Dulles. Here’s Why.

Photograph by Flickr user Thomas Hawk.

Tim Kaine recently said he and his fellow Virginia senator, Mark Warner, are “prepared to be jerks” if that’s what it takes to get more flyers to use Dulles Airport instead of booming Reagan National. National’s trajectory to eclipse Dulles’s traffic is partly the result of self-centered members of Congress, who set the rules for how far planes leaving National can fly and who prefer it to a 30-mile drive to Loudoun County for flights to their districts.

But locals also benefit: National is Metro-accessible, while getting to Dulles is as much of an operation as going through the TSA line. Now that it won’t be until 2020 that the Silver Line connects to Dulles, maybe Kaine and Warner should let us use National in peace and check their sky-high drama at the gate.