by Wendell P. Bradley
Wednesday, November 14, 1962
Washingtonians flying out of Dulles International Airport when it opens for business Monday will find it still incomplete but nevertheless equipped with conveniences found at no other airport in the world.
Dulles is a great place for lazy people. The farthest most passengers will have to walk from taxi, bus or limousine to airplane is 150 feet and all but 50 feet of that will be without their luggage.
Those who come by private automobile face a more rigorous 250-foot walk. They must go up a slightly inclined ramp and an escalator but from then on, like the taxi riders, they will find little need for legs.
The airport, which will be dedicated Saturday, is scheduled to land and dispatch 30 commercial airliners Monday, some of them jets and some propeller driven.
Typical Trip
A passenger going to the airport for one of the Monday flights will have experience something like this:
A 45-minute drive will take him from downtown Washington to the parking lot immediately in front of the spectacular new terminal. The distance is 27 1/2 miles over Memorial Bridge, the George Washington Memorial pkwy. and Rte. 123 to McLean and then a special 14-mile access road to the airport. All of it is divided highway.
The parking fee there is the same as at National Airport, 25 cents for three hours.
In the terminal he will find some of the modernistic shops and ticket offices boarded up and will hear the sounds of work going on behind barricades. But after a 150-foot walk to one of five airline ticket counters which will be completed by Friday, he can check his bag and reconfirm his reservation.
From the ticket counter he has a 100-foot walk to a mobile lounge waiting to take him to his plane. There he can sit and smoke, read a magazine, talk to a hostess, or listen to music until the lounge heads for his plane.
Stores to Be Ready
If he has plenty of time and likes to walk he can visit a candy store, a men's eluting store, or a toy store, all of which yesterday were still being built but will be open Monday, according to FAA of¬ficials.
Two large electrically operated arrival and departure boards, hard to miss on the spacious main floor of the terminal, will give flight information from all airlines.
The mobile lounges serve as waiting rooms but there will also he three clusters of cast aluminum and vinyl scats matching those in the lounges in the 600-foot long terminal building itself. The most elaborate waiting area, in the terminal's south concourse will have upholstered couches, marble-top tables and, later men pushing tea carts for those who want refreshment. The terminal's restaurant is not scheduled to be open Monday.
The mobile lounge closes its doors 10 or 15 minutes before flight time and moves to its waiting plane parked at least a half-mile from the terminal. If you miss the mobile lounge, you've missed your flight.
At the plane, the lounge extends a ramp to the waiting door and passengers transfer. The passengers walk to their seats in the plane without climbing up or down a step.
Baggage is carried by conveyor belt from the ticket counters to a loading area two floors below where baggage cars are loaded and sent to the planes on special roadways paralleling the mobile lounge routes. A special control tower for surface vehicles directs them by radio.
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