The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority board authorized $15.5 billion of new capital spending at Dulles on Aug. 19. With $4.4 billion already on the books, the revitalization program now runs to roughly $19.9 billion and stretches to about 2039.
The five packages
Package A is the big one at $6.2 billion, covering main terminal expansion and renovation plus work on Concourses A and B. Package T, at $3.75 billion, expands the AeroTrain and adds an underground access spine. Package B, $2.3 billion, demolishes Concourses C and D and builds new regional gates. Package C, $4 billion, builds out Concourses E and F. Package D, $3.7 billion, adds Concourses G and H if demand supports it.
That last conditional is the honest part of the structure. Roughly a fifth of the authorized program is explicitly demand-dependent, which is a more disciplined way to budget a fifteen-year airport program than committing to the full build on day one.
No builder yet
Nobody has been selected. MWAA’s own contracting page shows the Package A design-build qualifications solicitation, RFQI-26-24445, with a submission deadline of Aug. 19, the same day as the board vote. Qualifications closed; award has not been announced.
For a $6.2 billion design-build package, that shortlist is the thing worth watching over the next two quarters. It will be a joint venture, and it will set the pattern for the four packages behind it.
How it’s paid for
Funding is mainly bond issuance, plus grants and passenger facility charges, with debt service recovered through airline rates and charges rather than general tax revenue. Reported figures put the split around $14.2 billion in bonds, $200 million in grants and $1.1 billion in passenger facility charges. Those come from secondary reporting rather than MWAA’s own release text.
The mechanism matters to bidders. Rate-and-charge-backed programs live or die on enplanement forecasts, and an airline signatory agreement is what makes a fifteen-year capital plan financeable. That’s the risk sitting under Package D’s conditional status.
Exchange tracks the underlying program as the Washington Dulles International Airport Transformation.
Source: MWAA contracting opportunities; board action reported Aug. 19, 2026.