It shouldn’t be surprising that the greater Washington DC area has a lot of flights going in and out of its commercial airports. In 2023 alone:
- Washington Dulles Int’l (IAD) greeted 25.1 million guests (26.9% higher than 2022)
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) saw 25.5 million passengers (a 6.2% increase over 2022)
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) welcomed 26.2 million passengers (nearly 15% higher than 2022)
All three airports tend to be crowded, although people tend to have their favorites. And as more people move into neighboring Virginia, having an airport closer to home would probably be a good idea.
Word on the street is that commercial airline service could soon take off at Manassas Regional Airport.
PC: Manassas Regional Airport
A long history
Built in 1931, Manassas Regional Airport is one of the country’s 84 National General Aviation airports (that means it’s a, “public-use airport that does not have scheduled service or has scheduled service with less than 2,500 passenger boardings each year.”). It covers 888 acres, has 2 runways and sees over 90,000 aircraft operations per year.
The plans
Last summer, according to Axios, the city of Manassas struck a deal with Avports, a local airport operations and management company. The plan is for Avports to invest up to $125 million in the airport over the next 40 years, including expanding the current terminal, so Manassas Regional could provide commercial flights (mainly low-cost carriers).
The current plan is to add somewhere between 4 and 6 passenger gates, for a total of 30 flights per day. The focus would be more on regional travel and vacation destinations.
Artist’s rendition of future plans // PC: Manassas Regional
“We’re not certainly going to be a DCA or a Dulles; we don’t have the facilities nor the landmass for something like that,” Airport Director Juan Rivera told the Washington Post in July, 2023. “That’s also not what we want to be when we grow up, so to speak. I think it’ll be a niche market. It’s point-to-point.”
If the initial program is successful, they’ll consider a “Phase 2” expansion.
Not the first
This isn’t the first time flighty plans (you see what I did there?) have been made for the Manassas area. In the mid-1990s, the Walt Disney Company announced they were going to build a theme park in the area, before plans were eventually shelved.
The next step
Like many areas that are near airports, locals are concerned about the potential increase in noise if the airport went from zero to 30 commercial flights per day. After review by the FAA, the airport could start seeing commercial flights within the next year or so.
Feature Photo: Manassas Regional
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