TRANSPORT TECHNOLOGIES AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

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1 TRANSPORT TECHNOLOGIES AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT HOME ASSIGNMENT AIRPORT SEGMENT SAN FRANCISCO AIRPORT by KHATCHIK, ANDRÉ SHANT

2 INDEX 1 INTRODUCTION DEVEPOLMENT HISTORY Traffic in Growth and Patterns of Use Plans for the Future FORECAST FUTURE IDEAS REFERENCES

3 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 Air view from San Francisco International Airport... 4 Figure 2 Mills Field, before SFO construction... 5 Figure 3 Total Passenger Traffic in SFO... 6 Figure 4 Domestic and International flights in SFO... 7 Figure 5 Low Fare flights in SFO... 7 Figure 6 International Destination Flights of SFO... 8 Figure 7 Enplanements Growth Rates

1 INTRODUCTION This home assignment has the objective to choose any airport in order to do an airport assessment covering its history of development, considering growth in traffic over time and major

4 1 INTRODUCTION This home assignment has the objective to choose any airport in order to do an airport assessment covering its history of development, considering growth in traffic over time and major changes in patterns of use, as well show some forecast for the future and plans for the future. At the end some personal thoughts will be presented for developing the airport. The airport chosen for this home assignment was the San Francisco International (SFO), located south of downtown San Francisco. It is the largest in the San Francisco Bay Area, where we also have the Oakland and San Jose delivering international flights, and the second busiest in California, after Los Angeles International Airport. Figure 1 Air view from San Francisco International Airport Worldwide, it is placed at twenty first busiest with 40,907,389 passengers (2011). From all passenger traffic, almost a third is transported by United Airlines, as it has its Hub placed in the SFO. Also Virgin America has decided to have their Hub in SFO [1]. In 2008, was voted Best International Airport in North America, in the World Airports Survey by Skytrax, and was second the following year [2]. 4

2 DEVEPOLMENT HISTORY The airport opened on May 7, 1927 on 150 acres (61 ha) of cow pasture. The land was leased from prominent local landowner Ogden L.

5 2 DEVEPOLMENT HISTORY The airport opened on May 7, 1927 on 150 acres (61 ha) of cow pasture. The land was leased from prominent local landowner Ogden L. 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 Figure 2 Mills Field, before SFO construction After the war United Airlines used the Pan Am terminal for its DC-6 flights to Hawaii starting in SFO is now one of five United Airlines hubs and their largest maintenance facility. In 1954 the airport's Central Passenger Terminal opened, now known as the Terminal 2. During the economic boom of the 1990s and the dot-com boom SFO became the sixth busiest international airport in the world, but since 2001, when the boom ended, SFO has fallen out of the top twenty. SFO has expanded continuously through the decades [3]. Most recently, a new $1 billion international terminal opened in December 2000, replacing Terminal 2 as the international terminal [4]. The drop in passenger traffic added by the paramount cost of the new terminal has put some pressure on the airport finances [5]. 2.1 Traffic in Growth and Patterns of Use The following figures are made from data collected from the San Francisco International Airport web site [1]. The available data is from 2006 until The following figure shows the total traffic passenger in SFO. 5

6 Thru / Transit * 2 Deplaned Enplaned Figure 3 Total Passenger Traffic in SFO Looking at the geographical nature of the traffic, domestic and international, one can see that the international flights have not been increasing. The same is not happening with the domestic flights, for the last 6 years, it has been increasing. SFO did not have the decline as other airport in the San Francisco Bay Area, like Oakland and San Jose [3] Domestic International

7 Figure 4 Domestic and International flights in SFO From the growth in the domestic market, SFO had a major growth in the low fare flights, as can be seen below. When once SFO lost plenty of low-cost carrier passengers to its neighbor airports, in particular Oakland with Southwest, for the past years it has gain some market. SFO has started as well to be used for international flights in the LLC, i.e. to Canada and Mexico Low Fare - Domestic Other - Domestic Figure 5 Low Fare flights in SFO From the international flights, as seen before, SFO have not suffer much changes, and taking a deeper look in to the international destinations, neither in the region where those flights are related. Asia comes in first place, of almost 50% of the flights, and Europe is the second chosen destination. 7

8 South America Middle East Mexico Europe Central America Canada Australia / Oceania Asia Figure 6 International Destination Flights of SFO 2.2 Plans for the Future Although it has just started its operations the terminal 2 (T2) was a reaction to accommodate growth in passenger traffic and airline demand for gates. SFO embarked on a $383 million project to renovate Terminal 2 into a state-of-the-art domestic terminal. The terminal, which formerly housed international flights, closed when SFO s current International Terminal opened in December, Terminal 2 is home to American Airlines and Virgin America [1]. The San Francisco airport will part of a pilot project from FAA, the NextGEN, a new National Airspace System to implement across the United States. NextGEN is a wide ranging transformation of the entire national air transportation system to meet future demands and avoid gridlock in the sky and in the airports. It moves away from legacy ground based technologies to a new and more dynamic satellite based technology. These new capabilities and the highly interdependent technologies that support them will change the way the system operates, reduce congestion, and improve the passenger experience [6]. 8

9 3 FORECAST According to FAA, the enplanements growth rates for the US airports for the next 30 years are shown below. Reading the figure, one can evaluate that the San Francisco International Airport will have a growth of 2.2% [6]. Figure 7 Enplanements Growth Rates Other considerations were stated by FAA [6]: The top 100 air carrier airports accounted for million enplanements in 2010, or 95 percent of total U.S. enplanements; 9

10 The Core airports enplaned million passengers in These airports are projected to enplane 1.1 billion passengers in 2040, a percent increase over the forecast period (or 2.6 percent annually); The Southern region is expected to lead in passenger enplanements in 2040, reaching million. The Western Pacific region is projected to stay in second place with million enplanements; The Southern region led all FAA regions in the number of airport operations with 22.4million in The Southern region is expected to remain first in 2040 with 28.2 million operations. The Western Pacific and Great Lakes regions ran second and third in airport operations in 2010 with 16.5 and 16.3 million, respectively. In 2040, the Western Pacific region is projected to remain in second place with 19.9 million operations and the Great Lakes region is projected to remain in third place with 19.3 million operations. 10

11 4 FUTURE IDEAS Looking at the traffic of passengers from last years, I would focus more on the domestic market since it is having a trend of growth. In this case, in order to accommodate the upcoming growth foreseen, and instead of having built a new terminal, I would look at the existing installations to evaluate if they can be expanded. This should be done in a modular way to avoid unnecessary costs for the underlying uncertainty within any forecast. In case of a positive upcoming scenario of a huge growth and the necessity of a new terminal to increase the airport capacity, I would be done taking into account all the stakeholders: the airlines who are already operating there, to fulfill its demands; new airlines, to attract new clients; the passengers, to offer a better service; and the environment, to preserve in its best way possible. Additionally, I would look at the new remodeled terminal 2 to gain experience, since it has already gained several airport awards (especially environmental). To do geographically reasons, San Francisco Airport have not yet be able to expand, namely the proximity to the bay and consequently environmental issues. Taken this into account I would deploy a study to considerer an alternative plan for this extension, or get in a compromise with the environment authorities to make it doable. 11

12 5 REFERENCES [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] NEUFVILLE R. de, The Future of Secondary Airports: Nodes of a parallel air transport network?, Cahiers Scientifiques du Transport, [6] 12

San Francisco International Airport

San Francisco International Airport San Francisco International Airport (IATA: SFO, ICAO: KSFO, FAA LID: SFO) is a major international airport located 13 miles (21 km) south of downtown San Francisco,