I think your experience is fairly close to the norm for mid-late evening arrivals and departures at OAK.
Recognizing that the facilities just aren't equipped to handle the current volume of traffic, I think the airport administration could be more creative and/or proactive in managing the traffic problem. More aggressive "curbside management" (i.e., getting the traffic cops to work rather than flirt with each other) or perhaps some sort of remote drop-off/pick-up facility (?) might help a little bit in the short run. The second idea is pretty far fetched, but I think it's the kind of out of the box thinking the OAK management folks need to do if their going to keep pax numbers growing.
p.s. -- The sign on the carousel at an airport like OAK is more likely than not that airline's responsibility.
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by cblaisd:
Just to bump this thread with our experience: We arrived Friday evening on Aloha from Kona. Walking to baggage claim was like the pictures from the last flight out of Saigon. There was a couple and their little one with them at the baggage claim who had expected to be met by grandma. She breathlessly came up to them at the baggage claim and said it had taken her an hour and a half from 880 to the airport. If you were departing on one of the several red-eyes that night, the security line went almost to the lobby and snaked back on itself at least once.
When we deplaned, we were told luggage would be on carousel two; another AQ rep said carousel three. When it finally came it was on carousel one. And the sign on carousel never did tell which flight it was (is that an airport or an airline issue?)
Neither the airport nor its infra-structure was ever designed for the kind of crowds and capacity that it's experiencing. Even though we much prefer Aloha over UA for a Hawaii flight, the ease of getting to SFO now via BART will cause us to use OAK as little as possible.
Another related effect is that the off-airport parking shuttle vans are very slow (because they're sitting in the backup too); our Expresso shuttle took 20 minutes to get there, and then the driver managed (not safely, but managed) to get probably 40 people on the shuttle and a tremendous and unsafe mound of luggage!
Don't know if it's the same every night at 10:30pm, but that was our Friday night experience.
[This message has been edited by cblaisd (edited 08-03-2003).]</font>
[This message has been edited by snorkmaster (edited 08-06-2003).]