I fly 10-12 times a year between the Washington-Baltimore area and northern California. I am familiar with all three airports around here, and the four major northern California airports (SFO, OAK, SJC and SMF). I was born in Alameda, which is contiguous to OAK. My destinations in northern California include Alameda, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Rosa, Tahoe City, Sacramento, Yuba City-Marysville and the Lake Almanor area.

My favorite airport in northern California is SMF. If you live north of the Carquinez Strait, or want to go to the Napa Valley, in my mind SMF is the way to go (it is about equidistant with the city of Napa with the Bay Area airports). Airport is easy to navigate, rarely has delays, never has traffic--although one has to take a bus to the rental car center, it is quick and painless, and the buses are more frequent than they are at OAK or SJC (you take a cumbersome "people mover" train to the rental car center at SFO). For some reason, rental cars are drastically lower in price than at the Bay Area airports. SMF's only drawback is that it does not seem to have airline clubs (Delta inherited Western Airlines' club in the original terminal, but abandoned it when it moved to the new terminal).

Between OAK and SFO, obviously SFO is a bigger airport with more airlines, many international destinations, and more amenities. All the Skyteam airlines have clubs there (although DL's Crown Room is outside security). Plus, the BART station was built into the impressive new international terminal (which requires a ride on the people mover from the domestic terminal where DL is located). At OAK, it is a 15 minute ride from the Colosseum station on the AIRBART bus to the terminal. At both airports, it takes close to 30 minutes to get to the rental car center, whether on the people mover at SFO, including walking and riding in the elevators, or at OAK, where they use the fleet of buses once operated at SFO to take you to a rental car center across the street from the original North Field terminal.

The difference between SFO and OAK comes down to price--if you want a lower airfare, you are pretty much compelled to use OAK (the difference on RT tickets between here and the Bay Area can be as much as $500--I've priced out tickets to OAK at $450 RT and tickets to SFO at over $900. Also, if your destination is in the North Bay, OAK is much more convenient than SFO, as you would have an all freeway trip (via either the Carquinez or Richmond-San Rafael bridges) to within 3 miles of the airport, and they have finished construction on 98th Avenue, which is a multiple lane road with just a couple traffic signals; by contrast, coming from the North Bay to SFO you have to cross the Golden Gate Bridge and then drive on the Park Presidio Blvd./19th Avenue corridor (surface streets with many traffic lights) for 7 miles before you reach I-280.

OAK's Terminal A could be called the "Mexican Bus Station". When redeyes for the east coast are leaving, there are as many as four redeyes headed for Mexico (MX has flights to MEX, Guadalajara and Leon, and something called Azteca has a flight to MEX). There are only a couple of bars open in the terminal beyond security, and there is a burger joint "Giant 1/3 Pound Burger" before security in Terminal A. Over at WN's Terminal B, they were in the process of opening 4 new gates in an annex which is literally on the edge of the Bay.

There is a fairly decent place to eat near OAK on Hegenberger Road off the airport, Francesco's, which has been in business for quite a while (at least 35 years).