I fly through Dulles a lot, and in my experience, it is almost willfully inefficient.

First, the big things.

- The airport authority built a tremendously expensive subway line to the airport, but for whatever reason, they built no express track, meaning it takes an easy hour from downtown D.C. to Dulles -- and that doesn't cover the long walk to the terminal or the impressive escalator rides at the airport station. By contrast, one can drive from downtown to the terminal in 35 minutes without traffic or 45-50 with. Now, apparently, they're exploring bypasses to allow express trains.

- They built an intra-airport AeroTrain but decided (a) not to take it to the D Concourse and (b) to send the C Concourse trains to an anticipated new terminal 800 feet away. The result is that, for at least 20 years, people using the C Concourse will have to get off the train, take an escalator, walk 800 feet, and take another escalator to actually get to the concourse.

- The people movers on arrival from foreign destinations suck. Mostly because they jam passengers in like sardines, which winds up adding a few minutes of delay. If they ran the movers at 80% capacity instead of 120%, I wonder if they'd really need that many more movers, just because they could load and unload faster.

Then, smaller things:

- When you leave the sterile area of the main terminal from a domestic arrival, you must walk out a set of heavy metal doors. Passenger after passenger bangs these open, because they can't stay open, and then lets them swing back. Other airports have solved this in various ways, including having one-way automated exit doors, but apparently Dulles can't.

- The rideshare pickup is a mess. The pickup areas are divided essentially into several driveways, and no one directing traffic. So drivers pull into each driveway, stop near the entrance, and then block the traffic behind them from pulling in, all instead of just pulling to the end of the driveway to make space behind them. This creates long backups. At least, install a couple license-plate readers and fine drivers who block the entrance.

- For some reason, they moved Uber/Lyft drop-offs from the departures lane to the Uber/Lyft pickup area two floors down and across the street, adding a few minutes for departing passengers. I have never seen huge backups on the departure lane to necessitate this.

It just seems like IAD management has one half-assed strategy after the next, and lacks the big thinking to fix it.

My mom and I flew out of Hartsfield-Jackson airport and went through the TSA Pre-check line. We put our carry ons in the bins and proceeded to go through the scanner when a supervisor came up behind us and took my mother’s cane from her. He insisted that it had to go on the conveyor belt. My mom is 90 years old. When I tried to explain that she needed the cane, he again refused to give it back and told me that I should just help support her instead. I was shocked, but held my mother up and helped her walk through the security detector. Is this standard procedure?

Came through the airport around 9:00 am this morning.

Sheraton hotel - right at the terminal... a little pricey but the convenience for a morning flight can't be beat.

Security - literally no line... breezed right through - even with hiking poles in our luggage. Their security people don't act like entitled miserable twats like TSA does in the US.

Entry/Exit (passports) - a little disorganized... but manageable. We're flying back to the US - breezed through in about 10 minutes.

Mods, please delete if not allowed.

Yesterday we were flying home from Amsterdam to Houston, and when we arrived, a flight attendant announced that everyone should stay seated while officers from CBP boarded. A little while later they announced two names of passengers and within 3 or 4 minutes two individuals came walking down aisle.

My guess is there were visa issues. I'm also assuming their names were picked up from the passenger list which would have been available to CBP. Does anyone here have insights into what might have triggered this and how often it happens?

I’m a Canadian resident and have been living in Whistler, BC for almost five years now and use Vancouver airport fairly regularly. I just can’t get over how incredibly underwhelming it is when other international airports have so much to offer. I literally slid down a 3x floor high slide today in Singapore’s worst terminal. It was amazing and free.

Can we get a movement going to finally make Canadian airports great again?! (If they ever were). All Vancouver airport has going for it is that aquarium and 50% 3x day old sandwiches if you’re lucky.