San Francisco International Airport
From wiki.travel.com
San Francisco International Airport 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. The airport has flights to destinations throughout the Americas and is a major gateway to Europe, Asia, and Australasia-Oceania.
San Francisco 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 2005, San Francisco International Airport is the fourteenth largest in the United States and the twenty-third largest airport in the world, in terms of passengers. It is a major hub of United Airlines and the sole hub of Virgin America.
The airport enjoys a connection to an adjacent freeway, U.S. Route 101, as well as having its own Bay Area Rapid Transit 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 San Francisco 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.
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History
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 in San Francisco's Mission District), 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.
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. In 1954, the airport's Central Passenger Terminal opened for passenger service. 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. In 1974, a new terminal was built for domestic flights, and the CPT became an international terminal (known today as Terminal 2).
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.
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.
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. This new terminal contains a world-class aviation library and museum. 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. 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 San Francisco Peninsula and SamTrans bus service bound for the Peninsula. 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.
It is not uncommon for SFO to experience significant delays in adverse weather, when only one of the airport's four runways can be used 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 International Airport, 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 Bay Area Rapid Transit.
Terminals, airlines and destinations
The airport is composed of four terminals, in which two (Terminals 1 and 3) are domestic, one is international, and the fourth (Terminal 2) is under renovation. Within the framework of the terminals, the airport is split into seven concourses, in which four (Boarding Areas B, C, E, and F) are domestic, two (Boarding Areas A and G) are international, and one (Boarding Area D) is unused. Originally named the South, Central, and North Terminals, the domestic terminals were renamed Terminals 1, 2, and 3, respectively, after the new international terminal opened.
Note: Flights to and from Canada depart from and arrive in the domestic terminals, because they clear U.S. Customs at their Canadian originating airports through a border preclearance arrangement.
Terminal 1
Formerly known as the South Terminal, Terminal 1 consists of Boarding Area B and Boarding Area C.
Terminal 2
Formerly known as the Central Terminal, in 1974 it became known as the International Terminal. Terminal 2 consists of Boarding Area D, which formerly included gates 50-59. However, when the current international terminal opened in 2000, Terminal 2 was closed; it is currently undergoing indefinite renovation and serves as a walkway between Terminal 1 and Terminal 3. The terminal will replace Rotunda A once renovation is complete. The SFO Medical Clinic is located on the Arrivals/Baggage Claim level (lower level).
Terminal 3
Formerly known as the North Terminal, Terminal 3 is made up of Boarding Area E and Boarding Area F. This terminal is utilized by United Airlines, Midwest Airlines and American Airlines, chiefly by United.
International Terminal
SFO's international terminal, which opened in December 2000, is the largest international terminal in North America, and is the largest building in the world built on base isolators to protect against earthquakes. It replaced Terminal 2, which served as SFO's international terminal until 2000. The boarding areas have two levels, with shops and restaurants on the upper level and departure lounges on the lower level. Instead of the customary fast-food chains found at many other airports across the country, all restaurants in the International Terminal are leading restaurants in the Bay Area that have opened up fast-food versions of their establishments. SFO planners attempted to make the airport a destination in and of itself, not just for travelers that are passing through. The international terminal is a common use facility, with all gates and all ticketing areas shared among the international airliners.
The BART station is also located in this terminal, at the garage leading to Boarding Area G.
All the gates in this terminal have two jetway bridges for use by Boeing 747 aircraft, which are frequent visitors to the terminal, as it is a major transpacific gateway. Six of these gates are specifically designed for the Airbus A380, making SFO one of the first airports in the world with such gates when it was constructed in 2000.
For lack of space, the terminal was constructed on top of the airport's main access road at enormous expense; the advantage of this location was that it completed a continuous "ring" of terminals around the airport's main loading/unloading loop. The disadvantage was that the terminal required its own elaborate set of ramps to connect it with Highway 101.
The design and construction of the international terminal is owed to Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Del Campo & Maru Architects, Michael Willis Associates (main terminal building), Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum (Boarding Area G) & Gerson/Overstreet Architects (Boarding Area A). The contracts were awarded after an architectural design competition.
Despite the terminal's name, JetBlue Airways, Spirit Airlines, and Virgin America serve domestic destinations using this terminal, in Boarding Area A. When there are no gates available in one international boarding area, airlines will deplane from the other international boarding area. All domestic arrivals at the International Terminal use Baggage Claim 12, which is separate from other baggage claims due to United States Customs clearance for international passengers.
Accessibility
AirTrain
AirTrain is the airport's people-mover system that opened in 2003. Fully automated, it connects all four terminals, the two international terminal garages, and the airport rental car center a mile away. Previously, a system of shuttle buses connected the main airport terminals to the rental car center.
Rail
On June 22 2003, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) opened an extension from the then-existing Colma station to the airport. The San Francisco International Airport station, located in Parking Garage G in the International Terminal, is the only direct rail link between the airport and San Francisco and the general Bay Area. The station is served by the Dublin/Pleasanton - SFO/Millbrae Line. Tickets from the airport range from $1.50 (to Millbrae) to $5.15 (downtown San Francisco), and more for the East Bay. BART also serves as a connection to Caltrain, via a short hop from the airport to Millbrae Station. Tickets from the airport to Millbrae costs $1.50.
Bus
The San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni, San Francisco's transit agency) does not provide service to the airport. However, SamTrans, San Mateo County's transit agency, does, with three lines (292, 397, and KX) connecting Terminal 2, Terminal 3, and the International Terminal to San Francisco and the San Francisco Peninsula down to Palo Alto.
Numerous door-to-door van, airporter, limousine, hotel courtesy, and charter operators service the airport. Taxis, along with the aforementioned services, stop at the center island transportation island on the arrivals/baggage claim level of the airport.
Car
The airport is located on U.S. Highway 101, 13 miles south of downtown San Francisco. It is near the US 101 interchange with Interstate 380, a short freeway that connects US 101 with Interstate 280.
The airport provides both short-term and long-term parking facilities.
BART passengers can park long-term at all stations south of Daly City BART Station (except the SFO BART station itself), and various East Bay BART stations as well, but a permit must be purchased in advance from the BART website.