Comment by kube-system
8 months ago
The area has enough traffic to support three airports, and all three (DCA/IAD/BWI) carry between 26-27 million passengers a year, each. I don't think you could close one of them without some significant disruption to service.
Travel in/out of IAD from DC can take an hour, which is obviously why people there prefer DCA. And the flights there are all short-haul anyway, so many are the types of flights people are doing on short turnarounds.
They're not all short haul. I can do a direct to DCA from SLC.
There are a handful of exceptions (of which SLC is one), but broadly the airport is legally limited to destinations within a 1250 mile perimeter to keep long haul traffic at IAD/BWI.
Well that settles it then, military aircraft will have to just turn on their ADS-B transponders when within X miles of a commercial/public airport