Who is Dulles International Airport named for?

Makea Luzader
·2 min read
15
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

STERLING, Va. (DC News Now) — Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) drew attention on Tuesday after House Republicans proposed a name change for the airport.

Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) sponsored a bill that would change the airport’s name to the “Donald J. Trump International Airport.”

As lawmakers and community members debate this proposal, you may have one question: Who is Dulles International Airport named for?

House Republicans want to rename Dulles airport after Trump

According to its website, IAD was named after the late Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Dulles served as President Dwight Eisenhower’s Secretary of State from 1953 to 1959.

According to the Office of the Historian with the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute, Dulles’ tenure accompanied a “general consensus in U.S. policy that peace could be maintained through the containment of communism.”

The website said that Dulles took on foreign policy challenges during his time in office “including the integration of Europe, escalation of the crisis in Indochina, U.S. response to the Hungarian Revolution, and the Suez Canal crisis of 1956.”

One of the last events that he was a part of was forming the Eisenhower Doctrine in response to the Suez Canal crisis — which the Office of the Historian said “was an expression of the key tenets of Dulles’s foreign policy views: containment and international mutual security agreements reinforced by economic aid.”

Dulles resigned due to poor health in April of 1959. He passed away on May 24, 1959.

IAD was the second airport in the area after Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport opened in 1941 (at that time, it was just called the Washington National Airport).

Proposed DC budget includes increased sales tax, more Metro funding

The D.C. region needed another airport after World War II, and Congress delivered in the form of the Washington Airport Act of 1950 to allow for a new public airport near D.C.

Eisenhower selected the site for the airport in 1958, and construction was completed in 1962. President John F. Kennedy formally dedicated the airport to John Foster Dulles on Nov. 17, 1962.

IAD was initially named Dulles International Airport. Its name was changed to its current moniker of Washington Dulles International Airport in 1984.

According to Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority statistics, IAD saw 25.1 million passengers in 2023.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to DC News Now | Washington, DC.