A year with multiple challenges led to a 5% passenger-traffic decline at Reagan National Airport in 2025.
Federal job cuts, the seven-week government shutdown, wintry weather and the aftermath of the fatal midair crash over the Potomac River all affected total passenger levels for the year, Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) President Jack Potter said.
Still, Potter is expecting a rebound in 2026, in part because of a travel boost marking the nation’s 250th birthday in July. It will be “a major event … especially here in the national capital region,” he said.
Speciality signage at National and Dulles International Airport will mark the anniversary.
Reagan National saw about 26 million travelers in 2024, an increase of 3.3% from the previous year, putting the likely 2025 total around 25 million.
The MWAA won’t finalize final passenger counts until late February or March, but Potter previewed last year’s numbers at the Jan. 21 MWAA board meeting.
Dulles, meanwhile, hosted the highest number of passengers in 2025 since the airport opened in 1962. The airport is benefiting from United Airlines’ service expansion and the arrival of new domestic and international carriers.
“New airlines continue to join the Dulles family,” Potter said at the Jan. 21 meeting.
Among them is Boliviana, a carrier owned by the government of Bolivia that on Dec. 16 began twice-weekly service between Dulles and Santa Cruz, Bolivia, with an intermediate fuel stop in Panama.
The service is designed to capitalize on the large Bolivian expatriate community in the D.C. region. The inaugural flight was sold out, said Chryssa Westerlund, MWAA’s executive vice president and chief revenue officer.
On the horizon, Air Premia plans to start service between Dulles and Incheon, South Korea, on April 24.
Augmenting Asian services has been a strategic focus of the authority since travel restrictions were loosened following the worst of the Covid pandemic.
November passenger counts were in line with the rest of the year, with National recording a year-over-year 5% decline and Dulles 6.7% growth.
Counting the two airports as one, MWAA expects to report a record passenger total, record concession revenue and record parking revenue, Westerlund told board members.
“We are hoping to see a fantastic 2026,” she said.
But first, the airports will have to deal with potential impacts from this weekend’s expected snowstorm, which could cripple air traffic in much of the eastern U.S.
“We are keeping a close eye on the weekend weather forecast — we’ll be ready,” Potter said at the Jan. 21 board meeting.
