Washington’s Historic Airport Awaits Its Fate

Two Delta Air Lines baggage handlers at a nearly abandoned Reagan National Airport on Monday tossed a football in the sun.

The departure screens in the main terminal flashed “Canceled,” precisely as they were left last week when agents deserted their keyboards and got out. The only restaurant open was T.G.I. Friday’s, and there was hardly anybody in it--which wasn’t a bad thing, because it was running out of food.

Terrorism has stilled one of the nation’s busiest and most charming airports, built in an elbow of the Potomac River on what was once a plantation owned by George Washington’s stepson.

Its geographic appeal--10 minutes from Capitol Hill--might also be its undoing. Experts estimate it would take a jet 30 seconds to fly from any runway straight into the White House. So no one knows when--or whether--National will reopen.

“I don’t see anything being normal ever again. It breaks my heart,” said Jean Portillo, a spent American Airlines agent headed home Monday afternoon from a training session with her uniform in a bag. “I’m afraid to go to work, but I’m not letting them win.”

The demise of an airport almost as old as aviation itself would displace 10,000 workers and reroute about 45,000 passengers and 900 flights a day. But what these numbers don’t reflect is the institution’s soul, a gateway to the capital as historic and politicized as Washington.

Airport Renamed Amid Controversy

Franklin D. Roosevelt picked the site himself in 1938, announcing he was “tired of waiting for Congress” to do it. The original terminal was built to resemble Mount Vernon. Lawmakers named it after Ronald Reagan in 1998 as an 87th birthday gift to the former president, but only after a partisan brawl that left a lot of Democrats steamed.

For years, preferred parking at National was a congressional perk. And when neighbors complain about the jet noise, they have to get past the Washington elite who have come to think of it as their personal airfield.

But it belongs to more than the powerful people who live and work here. Visitors flying in are treated to an unparalleled aerial view of Washington’s majestic landmarks. A $450-million renovation a few years ago produced a sun-dappled National Hall of shops that made the terminal as much a boutique as an airport, with everything from a Smithsonian Museum store to a Victoria’s Secret. The renovated terminal includes a five-story wall of glass with the river on the outside and $5.5 million in artwork by 30 American artists within.

They built it with flood, fire and every other manner of disaster in mind--even the terrazzo floors are nonslip. But no one envisioned a terrorist-hijacked jet plowing into the White House. With that once unthinkable notion now a possibility, National hangs in limbo as rumors of its fate abound.

Once the charge of the Department of Transportation, the National Security Council will weigh in now. There has been talk of allowing only military flights or of requiring only southerly takeoffs and landings--away from Washington--which air officials say would make scheduling impossible.

With no decision on the horizon, employees were left to speculate this week as the last of the commercial jets flew elsewhere, empty.

“I just got word they are shutting the airport for good,” announced a cashier at the Cinnabon, which opened for the few employees walking through the cavernous place, doing $180 of business that in better times might have broken $2,000.

Others were more optimistic.

“Every conversation we’ve had with federal authorities has been around when we open, not if,” said Tara Hamilton, spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. “We hope in the next few days we could get an indication from the government on just when is when.”

Preparing to Reopen, but Doubts Remain

Some were already preparing for such a day. Guards practiced security measures on one another near a baggage X-ray machine, one assuming the scarecrow position while another wielded a metal-detecting wand. Maintenance crews took advantage of the lull to oil the elevators and check the escalators. The information booth was still staffed.

And T.G.I. Friday’s--where a week ago employees evacuated in seven minutes flat, leaving half-eaten meals on the tables--reopened Thursday with a limited menu and a crew of supervisors who are now serving, cooking and sweeping floors. General manager Matt Stringer spoke hopefully of more supplies on the way.

“We’re about out of iceberg lettuce, but we could get some in in a couple of days,” he said.

They know, though, that even if National lives again, it will never be the same. So on Monday, Stringer bought 105 miniature American flags and put them all around the bar, replacing the foreign ones that were there before.