First the KenCen, now Dulles. What's next? Constitution Avenue?
Trump has cast his eyes on Dulles Airport, planning a facelift and maybe a name change
Those with a lot of miles on their frequent flyer accounts may remember that there was once something called the Trump Shuttle. It was a shuttle airline that operated between Washington National, New York Laguardia and Boston Logan Airports and yes, it was owned by Donald J. Trump.
Trump bought the business from financially wobbly Eastern Air Lines for about $365 million in 1989 and gave it the full Trump treatment: leather seats, brass and gold-toned fixtures and so forth.
But despite the fancy faucets and the Trump name, the shuttle never quite regained cruise altitude and in 1992 Trump defaulted on the loan. He hasn’t given up on making a name for himself in aviation though.
The word circulating lately is that Trump has his eye on Dulles International Airport, one of two federally owned Virginia airports serving the Washington D.C. region. (If you want to land in D.C. proper, you need a helicopter). Trump has been criticizing Dulles and threatening to renovate it.
“Not a good airport at all”
“We’re also going to rebuild Dulles airport because it’s not a good airport,” Trump said at a December 2025 Cabinet session. “It should be a great airport, and it’s not a good airport at all. It’s a terrible airport.”
Dulles is no weed patch. It has four long runways, covers an area larger than Manhattan and is the primary international gateway for the D.C. region, with service to Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and South America. It also has the highest average fares of any U.S. airport (that’s a Washington thing, you know?).
The other local airport is, of course, Reagan National, jammed into tight quarters on the Potomac. It was just plain old National until 1998 when Congress renamed it to honor former President Reagan. Locals, especially Democrats, howled in protest but their pleas went unheard, or at least unheeded.
Dulles is a little bit different, in that it already has been named in honor of someone, John Foster Dulles, who served as Secretary of State during the Eisenhower Administration. But, as recent events have shown, that doesn’t mean it can’t pick up another name or two en route. Witness the former Kennedy Center, now the Trump Kennedy Center.
If not by air …
It’s not just aviation that has suddenly sparked Trump’s interest. He’s also becoming interested in tunnels — specifically the Gateway Project, a $16 billion tunnel expansion in a congested rail corridor linking New York and New Jersey. Construction had already begun when Trump ordered it halted, apparently in hopes that he could add another landmark to his trophy case.
We’re talking, of course about Penn Station, once an eminent architectural masterpiece and now basically a tunnel-like underground maze where Amtrak, the Long Island Railroad, New Jersey Transit and other railroads mix and mingle.
Trump is also planning a huge triumphal arch at the western approach to Washington and claims it will be ready in time for the nation’s 250th birthday in 2026. Will it be the Trump Arch? Stay tuned.
Does anyone really care?
It’s difficult to stop these vanity naming projects, which afflict everything from the smallest post office to massive public edifices. The locals get worked up over them but the response from everyone else is usually a yawn.
Texans, however, might cheer the renaming of Dulles. It’s actually fairly routine for an inbound passenger to leap to his feet when the flight attendant announces the landing at Washington Dulles and cry out: “Dulles! I thought we were going to Dallas!”