Business aircraft traffic picked up as anticipated during the January 20 inauguration, but with a temporary flight restriction in place over the Washington region and departure slot restrictions for Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD), operations went smoothly, officials in the region report.
More than 300 business aircraft were parked at Dulles during the event (not including tenant aircraft) and another 100 aircraft were at Manassas Regional Airport (HEF) in Virginia. In addition, a number of other aircraft flew in to drop off passengers and then departed.
Flight data suggests the arrivals were more than double the same period a year ago and about double those four years earlier. But, anecdotally, traffic was down from the 2009 inauguration.
The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) worked with the FAA and business aviation community well in advance to plan for the increased traffic. At IAD, several reserve locations were set up to handle parking. “We were given the entirety of the 11,500-foot Runway 19R, which we filled up with more than 100 aircraft stacked wingtip to wingtip,” said Signature Flight Support general manager Anthony Wright. Runway 19R was among several areas set aside for the incoming traffic at IAD.
Signature Flight Support had brought in 22 customer service representatives to handle the additional traffic, which was immediately directed to the overflow areas. The other FBO on the airport, which had just changed hands from Ross Aviation to Jet Aviation, had brought in 15 of its representatives from its Jet Aviation facility in Teterboro, New Jersey, to help with overflow traffic, added John Hovis, general manager of the IAD facility.
In Manassas, many arrivals had occurred the day before the inauguration, with APP Jet Center reporting that 70 had come in by 5 p.m. on Thursday. The FBO reports an average of 10 operations a day.
The FAA, working with MWAA and the FBOs, had put departure slots in place, and Dean Snell, NBAA's manager of air traffic services, credited that plan for keeping delays to a minimum despite IFR weather that prevailed the day after the inauguration. “The departure slots saved some lengthy delays,” he said. The slots ensured traffic was spaced out upon departure. The fear was, Snell said, that aircraft otherwise would have lined up to depart all mid-morning on Saturday. A few flights had up to 30 minutes of delay from volume, and traffic was heavy out of HEF between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Saturday, noted Snell, who had been on site at the IAD tower for the days leading up to and after the inauguration. But overall, he said, “It worked the way it was supposed to,” and he praised the FBOs and controllers for keeping traffic flowing. “All in all, the air traffic management side of the inauguration went very well.”
In addition to slots the FAA, along side the nation’s security agencies, had instituted a TFR that spanned the Washington region the day of the inauguration, limiting business aircraft arrivals to Baltimore Washington International Airport, IAD and HEF and requiring use of gateway airports.
