Tuesday, April 7th, sees the veterans from Peoria, Illinois and Provo, Utah arriving at Dulles.  On the 8th, the Utah veterans leave. On the 11th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd, 23rd, and 25th, flights bring more veterans to visit their memorials.  On the 25th, three sets of veterans will arrive.  After that, there are flights each day from the 26th through 29th.  It will be a very, very busy time at Dulles.

We invite you to come to Dulles to wave, cheer, and thank these veterans.  There certainly is no shortage of opportunities!   If you haven’t already signed up, click HERE to do so.

Greeting instructions are always sent out 48 to 36 hours before the planes arrive.  Check the instructions for the arrival/departure times as these sometimes change from the posted schedule. If you signed up but don’t get the instructions, it’s probably because there was an error in entering your email address.  Please double check when entering it.

While the weather outside is miserable and folks have been advised to stay off the roads, it’s a perfect time to cuddle up with a hot chocolate, a warm blanket, and your laptop to sign up for Honor Flights! All of the signup links are now active, so get busy. Folks have already been signing up for the early flights. It’s a great time for you to also get in the act and sign up to greet our honored veterans.

Changes will still be happening with the schedule so check back for any updates that occur.

Remember, if you do not get a confirmation email within minutes after signing up, there was a problem with the entry of your email address.

To sign up, click https://heroeswelcomeiad.com/2026-spring-signups/

In order to assist you in planning your visits to Dulles Airport to greet our veterans, we’ve posted the schedule as we know it today. We know that there will be changes throughout the season so check back periodically for those changes. Just follow the link below to get started.

https://heroeswelcomeiad.com/2026-spring-signups/

While it may seem quiet on the Honor Flight front to you …. it certainly isn’t for us. Each week, we are seeing more flights added to our schedule. As of now, we have 36 flights scheduled in between 21 March and 7 July. Several of those days have multiple groups, and sometimes multiple planes, on the same day. We have flights coming from six new places to Dulles Airport. We are working closely with the management at Dulles Airport to make it as smooth as possible on each flight day.

So if you are anxious to once again be able to greet our visiting heroes, you will have lots of opportunities. If you are associated with a work, social, school, or organizational group, please suggest that they come out to greet the veterans.

More details will be published by the end of January with the signups becoming available soon after that.

When the veterans from Columbus, Ohio boarded the mobile lounges to go to their plane to head home on the 13th of November, that signaled the end of the 2025 Honor Flight season at Dulles Airport. It’s been a busy year with 70 flights and just shy of 4300 veterans passing though the airport on the way to their day of honor.

We would like to thank the hundreds and hundreds of people who came to the airport to clap, cheer, and shake the hands of these heroes. We heard over and over that the greetings that they receive are over the top GREAT! We keep having more hubs choose to come to Dulles because of the greetings you provide!

The Honor Flight ground crew will be taking a well deserved break over the winter. It doesn’t mean that we won’t be busy as we are already looking at the schedule for 2026. The Honor Flight annual summit meeting is in mid-February which means that the spring schedule will be published soon after that.

Again — Thank you for being a great supporter of the Honor Flight Dulles program. See you in late March 2026!

The spring Honor Flight Season has come to an end.  When the Greater Peoria veterans headed home on Tuesday evening, the Honor Flight Ground Crew breathed a collective sigh of relief.  While we love having all the veterans come to see their memorials, it’s been a busy spring season with a total of 2306 veterans arriving at Dulles.

The fall season will start on 13 August with the veterans from Honor Flight of the Ozarks and end on 11 November with Honor Flight Columbus.  It’s also going to be a busy season with a total of 2356 veterans scheduled to visit with us.  To see the tentative schedule, click HERE.

We would like to thank the multitude of greeters who came to Dulles to greet our heroes.  You made them smile. You made them tear up.  You made them feel proud.  You gave them the welcome home that many never received.  It’s what we are all about and we hope to see you in the fall.

For those who choose to park in the terminal lot or Garage 1 or 2, the hourly rate just went up to $7.00 per hour. The maximum rates remain the same at $21.00 for the garages and $32.00 for the terminal lot.

We received an email from one of the board members of the Stars and Stripes Honor Flight team which included the following excerpt from a thank you email from one of the Green Bay flight guardians.  While we frequently have comments based on delayed flights, early flights, bus snafus, achy feet, and miscommunication, THESE WORDS do make greeting the veterans all so worthwhile.

“I wanted to comment on one activity that just shook me to the core. When we got off the plane in D.C., I never expected the greeting the veterans received when walking through the terminal. These people really touched my heart and made you feel so proud to be an American. And think what the vet’s are thinking; these people are all here to honor us. I hope the random adults, the girl scout and boy scout leaders and their troops, the sports teams and their coaches, and parents of all these kids, I hope they all understand the impact they have. This is a Saturday morning of navigating out to a busy airport to pay their respects. I know having kids myself, some of these kids will not fully understand their actions at the time, but they will. What a teachable moment. I let the hand shaking and “thank you for your service” attention focus on the veterans, but I wanted so much to stop and tell each and every one of them, “thank you for your support of these vets”. Again, I don’t want to down play the impact of the same ceremony in the Green Bay airport, it’s just this gathering totally surprised me. I am guessing none of these people knew these veterans at a personal level, but that did not matter. What mattered most was they knew them as men or women to served their country. Again, so proud of our United States.“

Please be cautious when using a company-sponsored email address to receive information from Honor Flight at Dulles. The Spring 2023 Signup notification that went out this morning saw several unsubscribes from business emails including a bunch from one company site. Some business systems automatically filter incoming emails to avoid spam. Getting multiple emails to company employees from one sending address might trigger this unsubscribe action as a spam blocker. Please consider a personal email address when communicating with us.

Parking at Dulles Airport will continue to be free in 2026!!

If you have signed up to greet the arrival or the departure of the veterans on any flight, you will receive a note from iadcoordinator@honorflight.org or heroeswelcomeiad@gmail.com with instructions between 48 and 24 hours before the event.

THE IMPORTANT PART OF THIS MESSAGE — BEFORE YOU LEAVE HOME, YOU WILL HAVE TO PRINT OUT A PLACARD TO PLACE ON YOUR CAR DASHBOARD. The lot where we will be parking — for free — is patrolled by the airport police. WITHOUT A PLACARD ON YOUR DASHBOARD, you risk getting ticketed or towed. The placard is not valid for free parking in any other parking location.

A map with directions is included in each flight’s informational email.

Updated 26 November 2025