To: The George Mason University Community
The College of Humanities and Social Sciences is pleased to announce the following dissertation defense:
Thursday, March 23, 2017
01:00 PM - 04:00 PM
George Mason University, Fairfax Campus
Nguyen Engineering Building, Room 1605
On November 17, 1962, President Kennedy, dedicated Dulles International Airport. Located on the border of Fairfax and Loudoun Counties, Dulles International was the world’s first airport built to accommodate jetliners. Despite this distinction, the airport
languished for the next ten years. This dissertation examines the reasons behind the airport’s failure to attract passengers and what led to its eventual success. First planned in the years immediately following the second world war the region’s second commercial
airport was to be completed by 1955. However, the initial location for the airport in Burke, VA proved unpopular, forcing the Civil Aeronautics Administration to halt construction until it found an alternative location. One difficulty in locating a site for
the airport was the resistance on the part of the Civil Aeronautics Administration and its successor the Federal Aviation Agency to modify their plans to adapt to political and community demands. Dulles’ design incorporated several innovative features this
agency considered necessary for all future airports and planned to use this new airport as the example for others to follow. This inflexibility was grounded in the high-modernist mindset of the government. This mindset was also present in the architect selected
to design the terminal building, Eero Saarinen. Saarinen also sought to change how the traveling public used airport terminals by giving the passengers who used the buildings priority over the aircraft. The result was an airport 26 miles from the White House
that had to compete with National Airport for passengers and saddled with a terminal building the airlines found impractical.
The eventual success of the airport came after three events in the mid-1980s. First, the growth of suburban Fairfax County, especially Northern Fairfax County, brought businesses and residents closer to Dulles than they were to National. Second, airline
deregulation brought on hub-and-spoke route networks. Dulles’ size and configuration made it an ideal hub provided it abandoned Saarinen’s mobile lounges for conventional concourses. The third event was a new master plan for the airport that did just that
when it proposed building a midfield concourse. A final obstacle to the airport’s success, the cumbersome funding process necessitated by being federally owned, was removed when Dulles and National Airports transferred from federal control to that of the Virginia
chartered Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.
Copies of the dissertation are on reserve in the Johnson Center Library. The doctoral project will not be read at the meeting, but should be read in advance.
All members of the George Mason University community are invited to attend.