Dulles International Airport to unveil new concourse

Well, it's a historic day at the airport. Dulles holding a grand opening for the new Concourse E. Fox 5's Stephanie Ramirez is live there with the airport's manager and vice president. Steph, good morning. Good morning, and that is Mr. Richard Golanowski, who's here with us this morning. Good to see you, sir. Last time you and I were together, it was in the summer, we had hard hats on, and this was bare bones. To look at it now, tell me how excited you guys are and how important this is for the region as well. Well, first of all, we're very excited. It's a wonderful day for Dulles Airport. It's really good for the airport and for the region. We're adding 14 narrow-body gates, 7 wide-body gates. You can see as you look around, the hold rooms are large. The walkway's large, 15 new concessions. United has included or has developed their gate of the future for the customers to make the boarding process easier for the customers. What does that mean? You were mentioning that before. Sure. What it means is that they're going to be able to queue the customers around the outside of the hold room so you don't... Jam-packed the whole room with people standing up, trying to get onto the plane. So it's a much smoother operation for United. And brand-new bathrooms. You mentioned different services as well in terms of what people can enjoy for amenities. There's a distillery on the other side of us, right? There is. It's still not open yet, but that's going to be one of the fantastic concessions that we have here at the airport. Also a brand-new United lounge, correct? Yeah, it's the second-largest lounge in their system, over 40,000 square feet. It's a beautiful facility. So this is the first major project like this. In two decades. Correct, about two decades. And this is the foundation of the transformation of Dulles Airport. We have $22 billion worth of work committed here at Dulles Airport over the next 7 to 15 years. Everything that we build from here on out is really going to look like this. And it's intended to improve the customer experience moving forward. Now, who will be able to use this? Is it only folks who are flying out of United? Because that's the main airline hub, right, for these gates? Correct. So these 14 gates are dedicated to United. And they will start to move flights over from CD Concourse over here in the next couple weeks. And then once everybody gets settled in and has a good rhythm, they'll start adding flights to their schedule. Now, can anyone, though, who gets to security also enjoy this new concourse? Or do they have to be flying? Flying out of United. No, absolutely. Anybody. Once you go through security, the whole airport is open and you can go from concourse to concourse. Use our AeroTrain, which pops right up into this concourse. Easy access. Again, enjoy the 15 new concessions that we have here. What about if you're flying internationally? Also AeroTrain access? AeroTrain access for the outbounds and then for the inbound, once you land here, you'll be going through our customs corridor up above us. Back to the customs facility at the IEB. So basically, if you have a long delay or what's it called when you have in-between flights? A delay, exactly, yeah. You get to enjoy it here. Correct, yeah. And like I said, 15 new concessions, very open, very nice for our customers, very relaxing experience for everybody. A gaming site as well, I saw, is one of the concessions. That was one of the concessions that came on board, and we're looking forward to that. What's your favorite part of this new upgrade? Well, two things. Number one, it's big and airy. And the second one is that it's easy access from the AeroTrain. There's been a lot of discussion about AeroTrain. train access over the years at Dulles Airport. When we're going to finish the train, what's the next step? This is the beginning of that. Having this concourse right above the train gives easy access to our customers. Okay, and we know there was some news about the president and Dulles. Do you think the president will be proud here? I think he will. I think it's a good start. And like I said, over the next 7 to 15 years, you're going to see the whole airport transform. All right. Thank you so much for your time. We appreciate you, Richard. We'll see you guys soon, showing you more in-depth on this brand new state-of-the-art airport. I'll send it back to you guys for now.