SFO International Airport stands out as being the country's first airport to have a fully-automated screening system for all baggage. SFO also holds the honor as being named one of the thirtieth busiest airports in the world. However, there are other reasons why SFO International Airport stands out with people in San Francisco. Topping the list is their "Fly Quiet" program. Since 2000, the airport officials and airlines have worked hard to keep plane noise to a minimum for area residents. By shifting some flights to runways that are farther from residential areas and helping certain homeowners sound-proof their homes, the airport which is located a little more than ten miles from the heart of the city, has truly shown the residents of San Francisco that they care about their community.
California laws prohibit smoking in any public building and within twenty feet of the main entrances, exits, and windows. For this reason, the airport has set up some smoking areas a good distance from the building.
SFO is pretty easy to navigate. Shaped much like a snowflake, the airport starts with the main hall and then branches into three main terminals and two international wings. Terminal 2 is the only terminal that is presently undergoing renovations and closed to all airline traffic. The parking garages are found to the south of the main hall and in the middle of the snowflake shaped building. A decent tram system (AirTrain) brings passengers to the parking garages and terminals.
Drivers who are picking up passengers can use the Cell Phone Lot free of charge. The lot has a maximum stay of one hour. Drivers must remain in their vehicles while waiting for incoming passengers to call. Once the call has been received, drivers can leave the Cell Phone Lot and head to the correct terminal to complete their pick-up. This lot is open from 5am to 1am.
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Long Term Parking - The Long-Term Parking area at SFO consists of two floors. The first floor can hold cars up to nine feet in height and the second floor has a height restriction of seven feet. Rates in the Long-Term Parking are $13 per day. This is often the least expensive option.
Discount Airport Parking - Long-Term Parking has the lowest rates, but may not be suitable for those needing to stay for less than a day. The Central Parking Garage offers rates of $1 per every 12 minutes. Here cars can be no taller than 6 ½ feet. The daily charge is $33. The International Garages are available as well at $1 every 12 minutes or a much lower daily rate of $20.
Park FAST is another option and costs $5 per hour or $35 per day, and all ParkFAST members receive a $2 discount. Drivers swipe their credit or debit card upon entry and then swipe it again to leave. The ParkFAST garage is located in the covered central garage, but has its own private entry and exit eliminating lines. ParkFAST memberships are suitable for frequent flyers and require two credit or debit cards to be on file permanently.
Handicapped Parking - Every parking area in SFO International Airport has handicapped spaces. Vehicles parked in these areas must have an appropriate handicapped sign visible to the attendants. Drivers parking in the long-term lot will find the parking spaces near Bus Stop 1. All shuttle buses are equipped with a wheel chair life. In the long-term parking spaces, there is no height limit. The other garages have a restriction of 6 ½ feet. All spaces are adjacent to the elevators. Oversize vehicles needing to park in the main garages must head to the valet parking (most expensive at $38 a day) for assistance.
Airport Hotel Parking - Many of the SFO airport hotels offer free shuttles to and from their hotels. These hotels all offer packages that provide both parking and accommodations either before, after, or before and after air flights. Good Nite Inn, Howard Johnson SFO, and Quality Inn SFO all offer lodging with up to ten days of complimentary parking.
SFO International Airport (IATA: SFO, ICAO: KSFO, FAA LID: SFO) is a major international airport located 13 miles (21 km) south of downtown San Francisco, California, United States, adjacent to the cities of Millbrae and San Bruno in unincorporated San Mateo County. It is often referred to as SFO. The airport has flights to destinations throughout the Americas and is a major gateway to Europe, Asia, and Australasia-Oceania.
SFO International Airport is the largest airport in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is the second busiest airport in the state of California after Los Angeles International Airport. As of 2006, SFO International Airport is the thirteenth largest in the United States[3] and the twenty-third largest airport in the world,[4] in terms of passengers. It is a major hub of United Airlines and is Virgin America's principal base of operations.[5] It is the sole maintenance hub of United Airlines. SFO is also a focus city for Alaska Airlines.
The two top airlines, United and American, account for 48.9% and 10.2% of passenger traffic respectively.
The airport enjoys a connection to an adjacent freeway, U.S. Route 101, as well as having its own Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station adjoining one of its terminals. Interstate 380 intersects Highway 101 north of the airport, providing further connections to the region.
SFO has numerous passenger amenities, including a wide range of food and drink establishments, shopping, baggage storage, public showers, a medical clinic, and assistance for lost or stranded travelers and military personnel. The airport hosts the Louis A. Turpen Aviation Museum, the SFO Airport Commission Aviation Library, and both permanent and temporary art exhibitions in several places in the terminals. Public Wi-Fi is available throughout most of the terminal area, provided by T-Mobile for a fee.
The airport was first opened on May 7, 1927 on 150 acres (607,000 m²) of cow pasture. The land was leased from prominent local landowner Ogden L. Mills, (who in turn had leased it from his grandfather Darius O. Mills) and was named Mills Field Municipal Airport. It remained Mills Field until 1931, when it was renamed San Francisco Municipal Airport. "Municipal" was replaced by "International" in 1955.
The U.S. Weather Bureau began keeping weather observations at Mills Field in May 1927. The weather records have continued under the National Weather Service, which maintained the Bay Area forecast office in the airport's control tower building until forecasting was moved to Redwood City. Although not the official weather observation site for San Francisco (with the official site existing in Duboce Park), data from SFO's automated weather station often appears as belonging to "San Francisco" in media sources outside of the Bay Area.
Starting in 1935, Pan American World Airways used the facility as the terminal for its "China Clipper" flying boat service across the Pacific Ocean. Domestic flights did not begin en masse, however, until World War II, when Oakland International Airport was taken over by the military and its passenger flights were shifted to San Francisco.[7]
After the war, United Airlines took up residence at SFO, using the Pan Am terminal for its flights to Hawaii and other U.S. cities. It has grown to become one of five United Airlines hubs and SFO is home of United's largest maintenance facility.
In 1954, the airport's Central Passenger Terminal opened for passenger service.[8] Jet service to SFO began in the late 1950s: United built a large maintenance facility at San Francisco for its new Douglas DC-8s. In July 1959 the first jetway bridge was installed in the United States.
Operations, expansion, retreat and recovery
In 1989, an airport master plan and associated Environmental Impact Report was prepared to guide expansion and development over the next two decades.[9] During the economic boom of the 1990s and the dot-com boom, SFO became the sixth busiest international airport in the world. However, since 2001, when the economic boom times ended, SFO has fallen back out of the top twenty.[4]
SFO has expanded continuously through the decades. Most recently, a new $1 billion international terminal opened in December 2000, replacing Terminal 2 as the international terminal.[8] This new terminal contains a world-class aviation library and museum.[10] SFO’s long-running program of cultural exhibits, now called the SFO Airport Museums, won unprecedented accreditation by the American Association of Museums in 1999.[11]
A long-planned extension of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system to the airport opened on June 22, 2003, allowing passengers to board trains directly at the airport's international terminal bound for San Francisco or points in the East Bay.[12] BART trains also offer a quick trip to the nearby Millbrae Station, where passengers can board Caltrain commuter rail trains bound for San Jose and the Peninsula and SamTrans bus service bound for the Peninsula; however, BART authorities have announced their intention to close the direct SFO-Millbrae route on January 1, 2008.[13] In 2003, the AirTrain shuttle system opened, conveying passengers between terminals, parking lots, the BART station, and the rental car center on small automatic trains.
SFO International Airport at nightIt is not uncommon for SFO to experience significant delays in adverse weather,
when only one of the airport's four runways can be used at a time, due to a lateral separation of only 750 feet between runways. Airport planners have floated proposals to extend the airport's runways further into San Francisco Bay in order to accommodate the next generation of super-jumbo aircraft. In order to expand further into the bay, the airport would be required by law to restore bay land elsewhere in the Bay Area to offset the fill. Such proposals have nevertheless met resistance with environmental groups, fearing damage to the habitat of animals living near the airport and bay water quality.
As such, SFO suffers from loss of service as many airlines, especially as low-cost carriers such as ATA Airlines increasingly shift service to the other two major Bay Area airports at Oakland and San Jose, which continue to expand for the time being. However, SFO has superior land connections compared to Oakland and San Jose, being directly connected to U.S. Route 101, Interstate 380, and the BART system.
However, recovery at SFO has been evident. Spirit Airlines began daily service to Detroit on May 25, 2006 However, the airline is not returning its seasonal service to Detroit in 2008. In addition, Qantas began service from Sydney in March 2006, and began service to Vancouver on June 14, 2006; however, service to Vancouver was discontinued in 2008 and is now a codeshare with Alaska Airlines. United Airlines reinstated non-stop service to Seoul and Taipei on June 7, 2007.[14] In addition, SFO has become the base of operations for start-up airline, Virgin America. At March 2007, Air China increased the frequency of the Beijing - San Francisco service from 5 times weekly to daily.
Also Air China is to begin operations from Shanghai Pudong International Airport during March 2009. It would also increase their frequency of their Beijing flights possibly to double daily, complimenting their proposed double daily Los Angeles service. During the beginning of the summer season in 2006, low-cost carrier Frontier Airlines began operating flights to Los Angeles adding on to its existing service to Denver, service to LAX was then discontinued in July of 2007. On January 9, 2007, JetBlue Airways announced they will begin five non-stop flights to New York's JFK and Boston's Logan airports starting May 3.[15] On February 9, 2007, Southwest Airlines announced their plans to resume serving SFO International Airport in the early fall of 2007,[16] after having pulled out of the airport in May 2001 citing high costs and delays. Irish airline Aer Lingus announced commencing service to Dublin, Ireland beginning October 28, 2007 following the passage of the open skies treaty.
A global warming study unveiled in February 2007 revealed that much of SFO would be under water with only a one-meter rise in sea levels.[17]
In April 2007, SFO announced plans to introduce a registered traveler program that would allow travelers to speed through the TSA security checkpoint in about 30 seconds.[18]
Baggage and passenger screening is operated by Covenant Aviation Security, a TSA contractor, nicknamed "Team SFO." SFO was the first airport in the United States to integrate in-line baggage screening into its baggage-handling system and has been a model for other airports in the post-9/11 era.[11]
On October 4, 2007, an Airbus A380 jumbo jet made its first visit and test flight to the airport.[19]
Film history
The short-lived television series SFO International Airport (1970) was set at the airport.
The climax of the Steve McQueen movie Bullitt was filmed at the airport.
Aircraft noise abatement
See also: Noise mitigation#Aircraft noise abatement and Aircraft noise. SFO International Airport in the last rays of an April daySFO was one of the first airports to implement a Fly Quiet Program which grades individual air carriers on their performance on noise abatement procedures while flying in and out of SFO. The Jon C. Long Fly Quiet Program is an initiative implemented by the Aircraft Noise Abatement Office to encourage individual airlines to operate as quietly as possible at SFO. The program promotes a participatory approach in complying with the noise abatement procedures.
SFO was also one of the first U.S. airports to conduct a residential sound abatement retrofitting program. Established by the FAA in the early 1980s, this program evaluated the cost effectiveness of reducing interior sound levels for homes in the vicinity of the airport, or more particularly homes within the 65 CNEL noise contour surface. The program made use of a noise computer model to predict improvement in specific residential interiors for a variety of different noise control strategies. This pilot program was conducted for a neighborhood in the city of South San Francisco, and success was achieved in all of the homes analyzed. The construction costs turned out to be modest, and the post-construction interior sound level tests confirmed the model predictions for noise abatement. To date over $137 million has been spent to insulate in excess of 15,000 homes throughout the neighboring cities of Daly City, Pacifica, San Bruno, and South San Francisco.
