F R 7 - 2 0 0 2
GATEWAY TO THE PACIFIC
By Volker K. ThomallaSan Francisco airport is right up at the top on a number of ld be music to the ears of any airport's chief executive. But there is another statistic in which San Francisco also features prominently that management of the airport would prefer to be lower down in the rankings, namely, San Francisco airport has one of the worst records for punctuality in the USA.
There are natural causes for this: the airport that was founded 75 years ago was built out into the San Francisco Bay, which is regularly plagued by fog. On average every third day there is a thick fog which reduces runway capacity to around one half.
The airport's four runways were built directly into the bay. They provide capacity for 103 movements per hour, as long as the weather is good and the aircraft can land with the required separation from each other. But when visibility is poor, the picture changes dramatically: then the capacity of the runway system drops to around 60 movements per hour. Holding patterns on the approach to SFO are programmed to reflect this.
Delays whose origins lie in San Francisco have a domino effect on the whole of California and the west of the USA. Just as one can rely on the fog to come, so it can be relied on to disappear. "At about 10 a.m. it regularly clears up,” said Ron V. Wilson, director for community affairs, in an interview with FLUG REVUE. "But if the fog is still there at midday, then we are in trouble.”
The four runways are arranged as two parallel pairs that cross each other. Only 750 ft separate each pair. However, the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) is demanding a minimum distance of 4300 ft for parallel runways operating under instrument flight conditions. The airport company is therefore currently examining ways of moving the runways so as to guarantee the minimum separation required. As the water around the airport is only 11 ft deep, one of the options under consideration is to reclaim some land from the sea to accommodate the runways. "We should know by November what our concept will look like,” says Wilson. "We have to consider all the alternatives and obtain approval from the airport commission.”
Relocating the runways is only part of a master plan that was drawn up some years ago to equip the airport for the expected growth in traffic over the coming years. "I don't know whether we will ever manage to keep capacity ahead of demand,” says Wilson.
The airport is still feeling the effects of 11 September. In January, passenger numbers were down by 19.2% compared with the previous year. Freight volume was as much as 21.8% below the level of the previous year. For 2002 the airport is expecting passenger numbers to drop back to 36 million, compared with 41 million passengers in 2000. A modest revival of growth is in sight. The number of flights offered should increase to 160 per day in the summer. Thanksgiving and Christmas and the weeks either side are traditionally the peak travel periods in the US. That is when it will become apparent whether passengers have regained their old confidence or whether the decline in traffic growth at San Francisco is there to stay.
To entice passengers back to the airport, the airport operator is offering reduced parking charges. Above all it is the franchise holders that are affected by the present decline in passenger numbers. Shop rents are linked to a minimum number of passengers, so that when this is not achieved they pay less rent. Wilson estimates the loss of income to the airport company since 11 September at around $1.5 million per month.
United Airlines has the biggest market share in San Francisco. 47.4% of all passengers in SFO are on flights whose numbers begin with the airline code UA. American Airlines is the second biggest airline at the airport, with a 7.7% market share.
Low-cost airlines like JetBlue Airways or Southwest, which currently are also making profits in the USA and are experiencing growth, avoid the airport. They prefer the Metropolitan Oakland International Airport on the other side of the bay, which is less plagued by fog than SFO. Low-cost airlines depend on rapid turnarounds which, especially in the morning, cannot be guaranteed at SFO.
From San Francisco one can fly non-stop to 65 destinations in the USA and 31 international destinations. As far as domestic routes are concerned, the connections to Los Angeles and New York are the most in demand. 10.9% of domestic passengers of San Francisco International fly to Los Angeles and 9.9% are heading for New York.
Asian destinations account for no less than 50.4% of international passenger travel, ahead of Europe's 35.2%. Next to Los Angeles, the airport is the most important American gateway to the Pacific, including Honolulu on Hawaii, one of the top holiday destinations for American tourists. Among European passengers, the English are in a clear majority.
Thanks to its situation in North California, close to Silicon Valley, air cargo also plays an important role in San Francisco. Some 870,000 tonnes of air cargo are handled per year. In particular, a lot of high-grade IT products are sent out by air from the Californian metropolis.
Two new cargo terminals have therefore recently opened: the North Field Cargo Building in January 2000 and the West Field Cargo Building in May 2001.
As part of the master plan, the airport has also built a new international passenger terminal in the space of four years. In the medium-term the airport operator is assuming an annual passenger volume of 51 million. The new terminal has an area of 167,000 m2 and 24 gates. Before it was opened, there were only 10 international gates available. The arrivals concourse is very spacious. Customs and immigration authorities have configured their capacities so that they can process up to 5,000 passengers per hour.
The new terminal is able to boast another superlative: due to its special location in a region that is vulnerable to earthquakes, it is the biggest single building in the world to be carried on shock absorbers.
Another project included in the master plan is the completion of an automatic people mover system which will create a circular link between the fourth terminals of the airport.
Airport expansion is not greeted everywhere by goodwill. In California, too, expansion has met with opposition from people who were afraid of an increase in traffic noise. As far as aircraft noise is concerned, the airport has therefore embarked on a communications offensive. It is one of the first airports in the world to display the current traffic situation on the internet (www.flyquietsfo.com). "When we set up this service, we got 500,000 hits in the first week,” says Wilson. "We are currently registering around 1,000 hits per day on the site.” The situational display on the PC screen is similar, after visual processing, to the FAA's radar picture. The ten-minute delay in presentation is intended to give interested parties time to hurry to the PC, switch it on and access the website if they want to know what plane has just flown overhead and at what altitude. "The number of complaints about noise has not gone down, but complaints have become a lot more qualified,” says Wilson.
In response to the question of which additional airline or which destination the airport company would like to offer, Wilson replies, "Anyone who wants to fly to us is welcome!”
From page 76 of FLUG REVUE 7/2002
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