Washington Dulles

[cook22uk]

Has anyone recent experience of immigration at IAD (Washington Dulles airport) - have been reading some comments online mostly bad with missed flights and huge queues but understand there has been some work to update the airport recently. Would like to know Virgin/BA passengers' experience of immigration times in particular as we're onward to Orlando.

[Jill]

We went through there late September and did not have any problems - the person we saw had been to charm school compared to our previous experience of Dulles and timings were fine.

[E. Cosgrove]

Flown into Dulles twice. First time with Virgin......nightmare, computer system broke down and we were an hour and a half in line, luckily we had no connecting flight.

Second time with United went very smoothly and we made our connection with time to spare[msnsmile]

[caroline]

We fly to Orlando via Washington quite a bit (although always with United) and haven't had any problems.

[dcnurse]

We are looking at a United flight via Washington Dulles to Orlando with a 1hr 25 min layover, will this be enough time to clear immigration and catch connecting flight? Anyone done this route? Thanks in advance for your advise!

[spaners]

We did a united Manchester to Washington dulles in December total nightmare. over 2 hours to clear immigration , missing connecting flight to tampa.
over 4 hours in queue for customer service . then had to overnight in Washington and fly to Orlando the next afternoon .

[Philomena]

We did MAN-DULLES-MCO 2 weeks ago with what was supposed to be a 3+ Hour layover. Left Manchester an hour late - arrived Dulles 2 hours late! We were near front of aircraft so were off very quickly. Cleared immigration very quickly - really nice immigration officer. Only asked 1 question 'how long are you staying in the US', 11 weeks said I, he raised his eyebrow a little, stamped our passports and told us to enjoy our trip!

It was a long way round to the departure gate but staff were very efficient when reloading the baggage, and once on board the Captain said we were going to wait a short while for the passengers from the connecting flight from the UK. Still arrived in Orlando on time though!

Would not hesitate to use United again but don't think I would risk anything less then a couple of hours layover just because of the distance between the arrival and departure gate.

[Lesley S]

Been to IAD on a number of occasions, never had a problem.

[Pookie]

Often done this route with just over an hours connx times, always with United.

We go in mid May and we have 1 hour 14 mins connx time but we are on the 0730 out of LHR on a Saturday.

[Lesley S]

That is the same flight we should have been on last year Lynne.....and was told when we got to the airport (4.30 a.m) that the flight had been cancelled and that we had been rescheduled for 4.30 in the afternoon. We eventually got to the villa at 2.30 am (Florida time)...

[Pookie]

Oh no Lesley, I will be one unhappy bunny if that happens. I assume the canx was due to a sick aircraft.
Could they not have re-booked you on another carrier????

I won't be at the airport at 0430 will leave home at 0515 ish, plus we would have to overnight in Orlando if this happens.

I will make sure hubby has his ID with him... he forgot it the one trip, when of course we actually needed it.

I will update on our experience this trip in May.