If you’ve flown into Washington Dulles International Airport, you might have spotted or even ridden in a bizarre bus-like people mover called a mobile lounge. While mobile lounges seem like a strange solution to an easy problem today, when they were introduced 61 years ago they were seen as the future of how an airport was supposed to work. Here’s how the mobile lounge was supposed to revolutionize airports, and why they’re a weird air travel rarity today.
As many of our readers know, I try to go flying either as a passenger or a pilot whenever I find the time or money. One of the more thrilling parts of my recent trip to Hawai’i was simply the flight out there. I haven’t been that far from home before and experiencing a new airport was in itself part of the fun. I mean, Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport has outdoor terminals and gates! I’m sure it’s not as awesome as I’m making it out to be, but it was new to me.
Yesterday, a reader named Timothy B sent in a request for me to do a write-up on the “airport terminal buses” of Washington Dulles International Airport. Now, I’ve never been to Dulles, but I have seen airport buses. The ones driving around Chicago O’Hare International Airport are usually just transit buses. They’re great, but nothing too amazing. Timothy asked about how the Dulles buses are built, how they change their height, and if they’re road legal. Wait, what? Then I threw some search terms at Google and had my mind blown.
How did I not know about mobile lounges? These are no typical airport transport machines.
The Airport Of The Future
To understand why the mobile lounge exists, we must rewind our calendars back, far back. The year is 1958. The Boeing 707 took its first flight the year prior and will go into service in October 1958. The Douglas DC-8 just made its first flight. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the de Havilland Comet has been in service since 1952. You didn’t need a crystal ball to figure out that the future of air travel was going to involve jets, and thus, aviation was entering the Jet Age.
Prior to this, airports were built to service the aircraft of the day. They weren’t built to serve the new larger jet aircraft. This is where Finnish-American architect and industrial designer Eero Saarinen comes in. He’s known for designs including the Gateway Arch, the famed TWA Flight Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport, and even the General Motors Technical Center. According to his book, Eero Saarinen: Shaping The Future, post-World War II aviation brought challenges. Many airports were located in or just outside of cities, which created problems. As Saarinen writes, Washington National Airport was located just three and a half miles from our nation’s Capitol. Its location in the city created problems, and more problems were introduced when jets started landing at the airport in the 1950s.
Living so close to a field means dealing with tons of noise, sometimes vibration, and sometimes fumes. Saarinen writes that with the advent of jet travel, it was imperative for airports to move further out from cities. The Federal Aviation Administration, then the freshly-formed successor to the Civil Aeronautics Administration, agreed with this notion. The FAA decided to replace Washington National with what would become Dulles International. After a series of studies, the FAA decided that the new airport would be placed roughly 25 miles from the city core in Chantilly, Virginia.
Saarinen’s office was already studying how to improve airport operations with Trans World Airlines. The prior five decades of aviation led to the rapid development of the airport concept. What started off as simple fields grew into hangars, which grew into stands. Those stands gave way to airport terminals, which grew gates and “fingers” to reach aircraft. Over time, those airports also gained concourses, concessions, and waiting areas. For travelers, this meant that flying went from simply arriving at the airport and boarding a plane to arriving, doing a bunch of walking and waiting, then finally boarding an aircraft. Airlines and designers figured there had to be a better way.
In designing Dulles, Saarinen’s office focused on the needs of a jet-dominated airport. Thus, Dulles would be the first American airport built around jets. In designing Dulles, Saarinen used concepts now seen at many airports, such as two different levels, one for departing passengers and one for arriving passengers. The airport was also designed with expansion in mind as well as peak traffic periods. Saarinen saw Dulles as a threefold design problem: the airport had to express the optimism brought by the Jet Age, a nod to federal architecture, and the airport had to serve as a sort of gateway to the nation.
One of Saarinen’s more fascinating innovations at Dulles was the concept of the mobile lounge. In his design, the Dulles terminal was separated from the tarmac and the airport’s operations by about 4,000 feet. Planes would fill up on fuel and get serviced out there, while the passengers enjoyed luxury in the distant terminal. To reduce the distance a passenger would have to walk, Saarinen did away with the clunky gates and fingers. Instead, passengers would enter the terminal, drop off larger bags, then go shopping. When it was about time to take off, the passengers wouldn’t walk to gates. Instead, they would board a luxurious mobile lounge that would whisk them away to a waiting plane. The passengers would then seamlessly transfer from the mobile lounge to their waiting aircraft.
Eero Saarinen was so sure that this was going to be the future of air travel that he promoted the concept with an animated short by famed designers Charles and Ray Eames:
In 1962, the mobile lounges were put into service at Dulles. Mobile lounges would also appear at Quebec’s Montréal-Trudeau International Airport, the international terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport, St. Louis Lambert International Airport, Charles de Gaulle Airport in France, King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Toronto Pearson Airport, Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, Acapulco International Airport, Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Philadelphia International Airport, and Mexico City Airport.
I’m sure I’ve missed some airports that used mobile lounges, but the point is that a lot of airports adopted Saarinen’s concept. Most airports have stopped using mobile lounges, but you can still find them in some form of use at Dulles, Philadelphia, and Montréal. They’ve largely been replaced by concourses, extendable jet bridges, and airport train systems. We’ll get back to that in a moment.
The Mobile Lounge
There are a few variants of the mobile lounge. The two main variants are known as the Passenger Transfer Vehicle (PTV) and the Plane-Mate. The vehicles are actually an unlikely pairing of Chrysler and Budd. You already know Chrysler, but Budd comes from another Autopian interest in trains. Founded in 1912 and bankrupt in 2014, Philadelphia’s Budd Company was most famous for its stainless steel passenger railcars.
The base vehicle was developed by Chrysler and when new, featured a pair of engines making 172 HP each. I haven’t found the exact engines Chrysler used to power these, but each unit weighed in at a chunky 37 tons and cost the airline $232,733 to buy, or $2,359,346 in today’s money. Our reader asked about road legality and unfortunately, there’s no chance of seeing one on a highway. A mobile lounge measured 54 feet long, 16 feet wide, 17.5 feet high, and had a top speed of 26 mph. So, even if you did miss low bridges, you weren’t getting anywhere fast. Original units had about a 90-passenger capacity.
As I said, Chrysler developed the mobile lounge vehicle. Budd’s work was giving the vehicle a body, which is why a mobile lounge looks like the unholy pairing of a subway car with a bus. In operation, a mobile lounge will raise its own height to match the doors of an aircraft, then it will deploy its own ramp for passengers to transfer between the mobile lounge and the plane. Later updates to the idea saw the ramp changed to an extendable accordion as you see at the end of a jet bridge.
The Plane-Mate is an evolution of the original PTV. Where a PTV raises itself using a large scissor jack, the Plane-Mate uses a screw drive system. The easiest way to tell the difference between a PTV mobile lounge and a Plane-Mate mobile lounge is to look at the roof. Plane-Mates have two towers housing the screw drives. WTOP News also notes that Plane-Mates are larger. They tower 24 feet off of the ground, carry 150 passengers, and weigh 92,500 pounds loaded, compared to around 100,000 pounds for the PTV.
WTOP gives even more interesting facts. The original PTVs were put into service in 1962 and today, they carry 120 people. The Plane-Mates were built between 1971 and 1981.
Currently, Dulles operates about 18 PTVs and 29 Plane-Mates. The oldest vehicles of the lot, the PTVs, are just as old as the airport is. Reportedly, their last overhaul was over 28 years ago and their last engine overhaul was over 18 years ago. Today, the mobile lounges at Dulles use diesel power, though their speeds are now limited to a leisurely 20 mph. They reportedly drink 260,000 gallons of diesel each year and cost $2.5 million each year to keep running.
As DCist wrote this week, a challenge in keeping the mobile lounges alive is the fact that they don’t have manufacturer support. Budd is no longer around and, apparently, Chrysler doesn’t refurbish these 61-year-old custom-built beasts. The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority committee approved $16 million to rebuild and re-engineer just two mobile lounges from the ground up.
If the committee likes what it sees, the rest of the mobile lounges will get rebuilt to the tune of $160 million total. It’s unclear what the rebuilt mobile lounges will be powered by. In the past, proposals called for the people movers to go electric.
Why Mobile Lounges Largely Failed
There are a number of theories as to why mobile lounges didn’t really catch on. Saarinen cites the purchase price in his book. Airlines weren’t that interested in paying such huge costs to eliminate fingers from gates. There was also the invention of the extendable jet bridge by Frank Der Yuen, which made those fingers obsolete. Further hampering the mobile lounge was the invention of the moving walkway and airports embracing local trains and satellite concourses. Of course, you could also just board a far cheaper bus.
Jim Wilding, former president of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, gave this explanation to Atlas Obscura:
“Part of the answer is that automated train systems offer a more cost-effective way of moving passengers, especially in the area of labor cost,” he says. But there is another, less quantifiable notion. Passengers arriving off a long-haul flight seem to see a ride on the mobile lounge, once described as a paragon of luxury, as a burden. It is a transformation that has overtaken nearly every part of the air travel experience, which used to be an excuse to put yourself in the hands of a friendly ticket agent or flight attendant. Now, travelers prize what little autonomy they have—choosing to stand, say, on the moving walkway.
“Said more simply, they tend to resent being captured for an additional period of time,” says Wilding, “when all they want is to be let free to be on their way.”
Whatever the reason, the mobile lounge seemed like a neat concept, but it wasn’t the future of air travel as predicted. That said, you could argue that mobile lounges came pretty close. The final variant of the PTV is the NASA Crew Transport Vehicle, which NASA used to transport astronauts from orbiters to crew facilities. Much like the animation shows far above, the mobile lounges ferried people to space-bound shuttles.
Today, the mobile lounges at Dulles serve a reduced role. Passengers get from the main terminal to the A, B, and C gates through the airport’s AeroTrain system, eliminating the need for mobile lounges to get passengers to aircraft. The mobile lounges are instead used to cart people between the main terminal and Concourse D, where international flights are. Note that the lounges don’t get people to the planes themselves, just between the main terminal and the concourse. Though, you could use a mobile lounge to get off of a plane if your plane has to park someplace at Dulles where there isn’t a jet bridge.
As for why Dulles is planning on throwing $160 million into a seemingly dead-end technology? Well, the AeroTrain was at some unknown point in the future supposed to reach Concourse D, but in recent years, expanding the train was reportedly thought to be too expensive and would take too long. So, the mobile lounges will continue to do their jobs.
A Product Of An Optimistic Past
I think the best part about these mobile lounges are that they started off as this crazy idea of what the Jet Age could do to travel, then they were actually built.
Today, the mobile lounge largely has been replaced by various technologies that make navigating an airport easier. Now, over 61 years on, they probably seem out of place for many travelers. But they’re really a relic of an optimistic past. The mobile lounge was part of a dream where a traveler strutted into an airport and was delivered to their plane in luxury. That dream is long gone.
Still, I like to think about some of the absolutely colossal airports I’ve been to. The thought of a lounge that takes me directly to my plane still seems fun, even if the reality may not be as great.
[Ed note: I’ve flown out of Dulles internationally a couple of times and have had the chance to use the mobile lounges. They’re strange, absolutely, and probably less efficient than a train. Still, I was so excited to get on one the first time and still love them. Whenever I travel through Dulles, even if I’m not flying internationally, I stop by to stare at them. I’m hoping I can take my daughter on one because the feeling of driving in a room, a dozen feet off the ground is unique. – MH]
When you said “lounge”, I automatically assumed they had a bar.
Perhaps I have a problem…nah.
While very cool vehicles, and one’s with an interesting history, as a part of the flying experience they are the worst. Long international flights that end with a ride in these to a long wait at customs is one of the worst ways to get back into the states. I do not see these getting replaced anytime soon unless they have another way to funnel international flights to customs. They can’t utilize the train unless it would be a separate line that drops you directly at customs.
All that being said, I know have a young child who’s excitement to get on one of these may make the additional step in arrival worth it.
maybe if the airlines hadn’t made flying so onerous, and the government (tsa/customs) made arriving so onerous, a slow ride to and from the planes wouldn’t be so off-putting. but i’ve never been on one, so maybe they are just inherently unpleasant
They still use them for international arrivals. Last December, after landing in IAD, we exited into a waiting Plane Mate. Stood around waiting and inhaling diesel fumes until the thing was filled with meat and carry-ons, then got driven to customs and immigration. I can see why they’re hated as a way to board airplanes.
I remember years ago, the one at Lambert field was used to connect the two long TWA terminals halfway down: there was a gate, you walked from the terminal directly into the vehicle, and it drove across the ramp to the gate on the other side. Pretty cool.
If I remember correctly, Philadelphia uses them for both boarding planes and concourse-to-concourse shortcuts.
I’ve ridden these at Dulles. They are unusual, but not exactly exciting. The most exciting airport transfer service of the past was New York Airways which operated airport transfer service between New York City’s airports in Boeing Vertol 107-II twin-rotor helicopters. They even had a stop atop the Pan Am building on Park Avenue. I rode one between Newark and JFK at the age of 4, and you can imagine the excitement of that trip. I remember it as very noisy and you couldn’t see much, but we were in a helicopter!! And that was all that mattered.
Few people today know those were intended to drive right up to the plane. I’ve been flying from Dulles since the early 90’s and they only used them as shuttles between terminals.
Great article. I’ve always wanted to learn more about those.
I think TWA was using a few mobile lounges at JFK in the early 80s for some international flights although we only boarded via jet way. We also got to ride the crew bus as employee dependents.
I did ride rhe lounges at Dulles a few times which was interesting and intrigued my kids. I’ve also run through an airport expecting a jet way and instead burst into the open next a bus.
Just a clarification: in Montreal, they were at Mirabel (YMX), not Trudeau (YUL, or Dorval as it was known before being renamed). Though I believe they transferred a few to YUL after passenger service was ended at YMX.
I can attest to Mirabel as I rode these there going to and from British Airways jets. I liked the idea of being a couple of footsteps away from another gate, but didn’t like the additional wait aboard these buses.
Will the next Mercedes article be about turning a mobile lounge into an RV or about adding one to her bus collection?
The mobile lounges are my favorite part about flying out of Dulles.
My first job out of college I worked for a company that had the airports authority as a client and sometimes require onsite work. Accordingly, I got an access badge and training for driving on the airfield. One lesson they drill into you are the three classes of vehicle that always have the right of way at Dulles: Aircraft, emergency vehicles, and the mobile lounges – the driver’s visibility is very limited that high off the ground; they will not see you if they’re right on top of you.
Saarinen “EVEN” designed the GM Tech Center. Ha! That makes it sound like some hoity-toity furrin’ architect sent a design to GM one day from far, far away… In fact, Saarinen was pretty much Detroit’s own HomeBoi — born in Finland, he moved here at 13. His firm was based in Bloomfield Hills. Many Fins in this area, and we are very proud of this one!
If they put nice cocktail bars in these things, they could turn them into profit centers.
Interesting article – thanks, Mercedes!
Reading this as I’m flying with free in flight WiFi. I guess that’s the least they can do for loading you in like sardines.
I flew in and out of Dulles a few times in the 80s, going to summer camp in North Carolina and school in Massachusetts, and the mobile lounges were still the only way to get from the terminal to the planes. I thought they were great, ferrying the passengers across the tarmac and rising to the level of the plane’s door (and the reverse for arrivals). It let the airport terminal be much more compact, not a sprawling monster of a building to accommodate all the gates. After not having had occasion to fly for a few years, I was disappointed to return to Dulles and find it had switched to jetways like everybody else.
This was truly a lot of engineering to do a job that could’ve been done much more cheaply if slightly more labor intensively by a fleet of school-buses-painted-a-color-other-than-yellow. Of course, that wouldn’t have fit the image of the Jet Age.
Having to ride a bus from a ground-level gate when the jet-bridge gates are all full is one of the most miserable parts of any air trip. Mostly standing room only, often packed to bursting point, waiting for ages in a sweaty bus at the gate while they round up the last few stragglers, jerky driving with over-enthusiastic braking, start-stop for what seems like miles around the airport, walking to the stairs in baking heat/freezing cold/rain etc. etc.
Mobile lounges look a lot more civilized, not to mention being relatively barrier-free for people with limited mobility.
(On the other hand, if the weather’s decent, the short walk directly from the terminal to the plane at a regional airport is one of life’s little pleasures, especially if it’s an airport shared with air force planes or, on one occasion, a humungous Antonov.)
This! We just flew Prague to Frankfurt. At both ends we had to take the herky jerky bus. We also had to wait at each end while the handicap lift, which looks just like a baby version of the mobile “lounge”, lifted some passengers onto and off the plane. And of course we had to schlep up and down the stairs. Sure would have been awesome to have this option.
Speaking of weird airport busses, when are you going to do an article about the absolutely bizarre looking bus from the end of Speed?
http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_6502-OAF-SU-240.html
I grew up in Northern VA in the 1980’s and as a kid went to Dulles pretty frequently, though mostly to meet incoming visiting family and the like. Two of my strongest memories were: 1. riding the mobile lounges to the midfield concourse (I think there was only one out there at that point), and 2. seeing a Concord take off. Even though I haven’t been there in many years, it’s still my favorite of the big airports.
Nice stair car!
“Watch out for bridges and hop-ons; you’re gonna get some hop-ons.”
My grandparents lived one town over from Chantilly and one my uncles worked at Dulles, both before and after it opened. Funny thing, my grandmother always scoffed at the idea of anybody coming all the way out to Chantilly Airport to fly in out of DC. I don’t think she took to calling it Dulles for about 10 years.
Whenever we visited the grands, my uncle used to take me out to the field, and later the terminal (which had an outside observation deck below the control tower) to watch the planes. Among my favorite things were the mobile lounges, all PTVs at that time. On one visit when I was six, he took me into the concourse and to my surprise we boarded a mobile lounge where he’d arranged for me to ride all day while he worked. One of the best days of my life.
Several years later, after his stint in the Army, he returned to work at Dulles. That summer, we stayed with my grandparents for six weeks while my parents worked overseas. I became a fixture (and probably a pest) at the airport and was given free reign to ride out to planes and back on the mobile lounges. It was a far more innocent age. I was also given a toy PTV that I believe they used to sell in the gift shop. Wish I still had that because I’ve never seen once since and mine is long lost.
Many years later, while I was in the Air Force and in subsequent civilian work, I often flew into Dulles. On the international returns I got to, once again, ride mobile lounges (mostly Plane Mates, then) to the original concourse. It brought back so many memories. In the late 90s, I worked for an air cargo line based out of Dulles and on my last day of employment there, I wangled a ride on an old PTV between the new middle concourse and the main terminal. That was the last time I ever rode a mobile lounge, nearly 40 years after my first ride.
Thanks for the blast from the past. Maybe next time we can talk about the Budd RDCs I used to ride all day in and out of Boston.
This is cool, thanks for sharing.
PTV. Born from jets.
*Born for jets.
I’ve flown out of Dulles a million times so got to experience the people movers constantly. The new subway is so much better if less cool.
But once, I got the plane-mate experience. And no, I’m not that old, it happened in the ’00s. But it was the full deal, rising up & docking with the plane as it sat midfield.
Sadly, the interior was *not* in the swinging ’60s configuration (no gooseneck reading lamps, ashtrays, or cocktails), but still cool (there are stairwells to the ground level inside) and something I’ll always remember.
Hah I still got to ride these a few times when I lived around DC 2004-2011.
First time I arrived to Dulles they really caught me by surprise. Coming from abroad they definitely didn’t help the experience as you went from one large aluminum tube to another box on wheels that would take you to a very long line (to pass immigration).
Awesome content! Never knew these existed, great article!
Very cool! Thanks, Mercedes! This topic seems like the perfect intersection for you.
I’m a big fan of Eero Saarinen and his work. I was in awe the first time I flew through Dulles, and I got to see some of the TWA Flight Center when JetBlue was renovating it mid-00s (before it was reopened).
Those are neat, how have I never come across these?
I love these stories of weird, but fascinating vehicles/objects/whatever. Keep up the great work Mercedes!