Washington Dulles International Airport , typically referred to as Dulles International Airport, Dulles Airport, Washington Dulles, or simply Dulles ( ), is an international airport in the Eastern United States, located in Loudoun County and Fairfax County in Virginia, west of Downtown , and away from Ronald Reagan National Airport in Arlington County, Virginia. Opened in 1962, it is named after John Foster Dulles the 52nd U.S. Secretary of State who served under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Dulles main terminal is a well-known landmark designed by Eero Saarinen, who also designed the famous TWA Flight Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Operated by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, Washington Dulles Airport occupies , straddling the Loudoun–Fairfax Most of the airport is in the unincorporated community of Dulles in Loudoun County, with a small portion in the unincorporated community of Chantilly in Fairfax County. Dulles is one of the three major airports in the larger Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area, the others being Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) and Baltimore/Washington International Airport (BWI), and—by land size and amount of facilities—is the largest of the three. Dulles is considered the region's international air hub, with dozens of nonstop international flights. Dulles has the most international passenger traffic of any airport in the Mid-Atlantic outside the New York metropolitan area, including approximately 90% of the international passenger traffic in the Baltimore–Washington region. It had more than 20 million passenger enplanements every year from 2004 to 2019, with 24 million enplanements in 2019. On a typical day, more than 60,000 passengers pass through Dulles to and from more than 125 destinations around the world. Increased domestic travel from Reagan has eroded some of Dulles's domestic routes. Dulles overtook Reagan in total enplanements in 2019. However, in 2018, Dulles surpassed Reagan in yearly passenger boardings after having fewer passengers since 2015. Furthermore, it still ranks behind BWI in total annual passenger boardings. Dulles is a fortress hub for United Airlines and is frequently used by airlines that United has codeshare agreements with, mostly composed of Star Alliance members like Turkish Airlines and Lufthansa. History Origins Before World War II, Hoover Field was the main commercial airport serving Washington, on the site now occupied by the Pentagon and its parking lots. It was replaced by Washington National Airport in 1941, a short distance southeast. After the war, in 1948, the Civil Aeronautics Administration began to