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San Francisco International Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine)
is a major international Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine)
located 13 miles (21 km) south of San Francisco, California, adjacent to the cities of Millbrae and San Bruno in unincorporated San Mateo County. The
Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine) has flights to destinations throughout the Americas and is a major gateway to Europe, Asia, and Australasia.
San Francisco is the largest Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine)
in the San Francisco Bay Area. As of 2005, San Francisco International Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine)
is the fourteenth largest in the United States[1] and the twenty-third largest
Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine) in the world,[2] in terms of passengers. It is a major hub of United Airlines, and is expected to become the main hub of Virgin America when the airline begins operations in 2006.
The Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine) 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 (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine), providing further connections to the region.
San Francisco Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine)
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 (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine) hosts the Louis A. Turpen Aviation Museum, the San Francisco
Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine) 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.[3]
History
The Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine) 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, and was named Mills Field Municipal
Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine). It remained Mills Field until 1931, when it was renamed San Francisco Municipal
Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine). "Municipal" was replaced by "International" in 1955.
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 (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine) was taken over by the military and its passenger flights were moved to San Francisco.[4]
After the war, United Airlines took up residence at San Francisco Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine), using the Pan Am terminal for its flights to Hawaii and other U.S. cities. In 1954, the
Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine)'s Central Passenger Terminal opened for passenger service.[5] Jet service to
San Francisco Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine)
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 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).
During the economic boom of the 1990s and the dot-com boom, San Francisco Airport
(contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine) became the 6th busiest international
Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine) in the world. However, since 2001, when the economic boom times ended,
San Francisco Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine)
has fallen back out of the top twenty.[2]
San Francisco Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine)
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.[5] This terminal contains a world-class aviation library and museum.[6] An extension of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system to the
Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine) opened on June 22, 2003, allowing passengers to board trains directly at the
Airport's (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine) international terminal bound for San Francisco or points in the East Bay.[7] 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. 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.
San Francisco International Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine)
at nightIt is not uncommon for San Francisco Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine)
to experience significant delays in adverse weather, when only one of the Airport's (contact us for your San Francisco airport
limousine) four runways can be used a time.
Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine) planners have floated proposals to extend the
Airport's (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine) 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 (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine) 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 (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine) and bay water quality.
As such, San Francisco Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine)
suffers from loss of service as many airlines, especially low-cost carriers such as Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airways, and ATA Airlines increasingly shift service to the other two major Bay Area
Airports (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine), Oakland and San Jose, which continue to expand for the time being. However,
San Francisco Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine)
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 San Francisco Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine)
has been evident. Icelandair commenced San Francisco-Reykjavík service on May 18, 2005, and Spirit Airlines began daily service to Detroit on May 25, 2006. In addition, Qantas began service from Sydney in March 2006, and began service to Vancouver on June 14, 2006. United Airlines will expand service to Seoul from seasonal to year-round in October 2006, and, starting April 1, 2007, reinstate non-stop service to Taipei and add more flights to Hong Kong.[8] United Airlines has also applied for flights from
San Francisco Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine)
to Guangzhou, China.[9] In addition, San Francisco Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine)
will be the base of operations for Virgin America when the airline begins operations in late 2006.
Aircraft Noise Abatement
San Francisco International Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine)
in the last rays of an April daySan Francisco Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine) was one of the first
Airports (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine) to implement a Fly Quiet Program which grades individual air carriers on their performance on noise abatement procedures while flying in and out of
San Francisco Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine). 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
San Francisco Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine). The program promotes a participatory approach in complying with the noise abatement procedures.
San Francisco Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine)
was also one of the first U.S. Airports (contact us for your San Francisco airport
limousine) to conduct a residential sound abatement retrofitting program. Established by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the early 1980s, this program evaluated the cost effectiveness of reducing interior sound levels for homes in the vicinity of the
Airport (contact us for your San Francisco airport limousine), 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.[10]
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