Going Back In Time: Flying From Washington National’s Terminal A

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I’m not an expert on the airports of Washington D.C. I know that Dulles is further away from the city than Washington National Airport and that Baltimore isn’t anywhere nearby, regardless of what BWI’s name implies. On our trip to Washington D.C., we flew to Dulles because we were attending the Freddie Awards at the nearby Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.

But we were spending the rest of our time in the city, so I booked flights home on Southwest from National Airport. We took the Metro from our hotel to the airport, which was an easy trip. When we entered the terminal, we were at the TSA Checkpoint but not for Southwest. According to the signage, we had to walk past the checkpoint. OK, that’s a little odd. I didn’t know that Southwest, along with Frontier and Air Canada flies from Terminal A. That’s the original airport terminal and it’s quite a walk from the rest of the airport.

To get from the Metro to Gates A1-A9, you have to walk around the checkpoint to a long hallway. You’ll go past the old ticket counter area from when the entire airport was this building. Most of all, I couldn’t help but think I was walking back in time. Like I was at an amusement park and this was the queue to set the mood. It felt like a school or bank and the walk was seemingly endless with multiple hallways. Eventually, we got to the ticket lobby for the three airlines housed in Terminal A but since we had no checked bags, we went right to the checkpoint.

There are CLEAR checkpoints for the 9 gates of Terminal A and we had no wait. However, this was Sharon’s chance to be subject to the new “random” ID check.

When we got through the concessions area, which was some booths selling snacks and magazines, we were seemingly back in the 1960s.

I got a very “Men in Black” vibe from Terminal A, right down to the oval signs advertising the stores. While the area looked retro, there were modern conveniences. For example, the central seating area doubled as the bar/restaurant. There were several tables with plugs suitable for working. Finally, the free Wi-Fi worked and was suitably fast.

A downside was that the cavernous area made it difficult to hear any of the announcements from the gates about when flights were beginning to board.

While I loved flying from LaGuardia’s Marine Air Terminal, this wasn’t the same. It was inconvenient to get to the gates because of the long walk from public transportation. All the airport lounges are in Terminals B & C, so you’re limited to what’s available in Terminal A, which isn’t much.

Cover Photo CC-BY-SA-3.0/Matt H. Wade at Wikipedia

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