Rating the Airports

Krishnan Rajagopalan hates waiting in long lines at the airport. The managing partner for executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles International Inc. in McLean prefers to book his twice-a-week flights through Reagan National Airport, where he can get to the gate quickly or leave within minutes of arrival.

"I have no trouble here," he said while drinking a cup of coffee at a Starbucks overlooking National's arty terminal B/C. "All business guys who travel a lot care about is getting in or out of the airport."

Navigating the Washington region's airports may be a little more difficult this summer with the number of passengers expected to return to pre-9/11 levels, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Thanks to a proliferation of low-fare carriers, reduced fears of terrorism and a sturdy economy, more and more travelers are enduring the necessary evils of security lines, baggage screening and meal-less flights and choosing to fly the seemingly more friendly skies.

The FAA predicted that U.S. commercial airlines will carry more than 717 million passengers this year, up from 688.5 million in 2004.

With wait times increasing at airports across the country -- a J.D. Power and Associates study last year found the average time spent waiting for security checks was up 15 percent in 2004, to an average of 15 minutes -- pleasing business passengers is more challenging than ever.

"We know people are time crunched," said Linda Hirneise, executive director of travel industry research at J.D. Power. Hirneise said airports that move people through check-in, departure and arrival quickly rated the highest in J.D. Power's customer satisfaction study, which surveyed more than 9,000 passengers.

According to the study, National rated highest of the three local airports, 15th out of 34 mid-size international airports, defined as serving 10 million to 30 million passengers a year. Baltimore-Washington International ranked 20th and Washington Dulles International was third-worst, in part because of its long security lines.

Still, given tight corporate budgets, local business travel managers are more concerned about the price than customer satisfaction when making travel arrangements, said Dillon H. Boyer, chairman of the Baltimore-Washington Business Travel Association, a nonprofit group of corporate travel executives and travel management companies.

"The decisions are really based on cost savings and are fare-driven," Boyer said.

Dulles and BWI are expanding. Dulles is building a train system, a new air traffic control tower, a fourth runway, a new security mezzanine behind the main terminal and 12 additional gates at Concourse B. Those projects are planned to be completed by 2009. At BWI, a terminal- widening project, upgrades to baggage claim and ticketing areas and road widening will be completed by the end of 2006.

Officials at all three airports said they were encouraged by the increase in passengers. "This will be a record summer for us in terms of traffic," said James E. Bennett, president and chief executive of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which manages National and Dulles. BWI is also looking at "very busy" season, said Paul J. Wiedefeld, executive director of the Maryland Aviation Administration.

Here's what travelers can expect at each airport: