Flight delays may be the norm at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) this summer.
The Federal Aviation Administration has reduced arrivals by a third to 36 flights per hour due to construction work on SFO’s north-south runways and safety concerns about parallel flight approaches, the regulator told TPG. The limit will increase to 45 flights per hour in October after runways reopen, but is still below the 54 flights per hour previously allowed.
Travelers should expect a quarter of all flights to SFO this summer to experience a delay of 30 minutes or more, an airport spokesperson said.
Both the FAA and the airport are working to increase the arrival rate, they said separately.
The SFO flight reductions are the latest by the FAA to mitigate potential delays and improve safety at major airports. In March, the agency moved to Reduce flights at Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD)where American Airlines and United Airlines are in a fierce battle for gate space, running just 2,608 flights per day, down from 3,080 scheduled flights on peak days this summer. No decision has been made on how the ORD reductions will occur.
And in 2025, the FAA limited movements (a takeoff or landing is a movement) at Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) at 72 per hour through October.
The safety-related flight reductions at SFO come just over a week after an Air Canada regional plane crashed into an airport fire truck at LaGuardia Airport (LGA) in New York, killing both pilots.
While the FAA has been quick to limit capacity at airports across the United States, the agency has said little about how it plans to increase capacity amid growing demand for air travel. The Trump administration is investing billions of dollars in improving the country’s air traffic control system, but has not said how much those investments will increase air traffic capacity.
The problem at SFO is the distance between its runways. Both the two east-west runways and the two north-south runways are just 750 feet apart, among the closest in the country, FAA data shows. The agency requires special rules for simultaneous approaches to parallel runways less than 2,500 feet apart.
Reward your inbox with TPG’s daily newsletter
Join over 700,000 readers to receive breaking news, in-depth guides, and exclusive offers from TPG experts.
Previously, flights were allowed to approach the OFS’s two east-west runways in a staggered formation, with one aircraft directly ahead of the other. This allowed the airport to handle up to 54 arrivals per hour in good weather.
Arrival rates are already significantly reduced in bad weather, which is common in the fog-prone SFO.
Brett Snyder, founder of Cranky Concierge and author of the blog “Cranky Flier,” wrote Thursday that there is a A silver lining for the FAA flight limit in the OFS.
“The airport will probably now be much better operationally,” he wrote. “If capacity is the same in good or bad weather, airlines will create a schedule that works no matter what.”
Still, a reduction in arrivals capacity has implications for airlines. SFO is a major hub for United and a key base for Alaska Airlines.
United is “reviewing updated FAA guidance to determine if we will need to make any changes to our flight schedule in the future,” a spokesperson said.
Alaska Airlines is “closely monitoring the situation at SFO and the dynamics are changing day to day,” a spokesperson said.
More than a quarter of all arrivals at SFO (or 154 flights) were delayed Wednesday, according to data from flight tracking website FlightAware.
Related reading:
