SFO and "Terminal I"
 

In the "what were you thinking" department: I drive for a shuttle company that services SFO, which is set up with four terminals--1, 2, 3 and "I" for "international". Sounds harmless at first. Unfortunately, on folks' itinerary printouts, "Terminal I" reads as "Terminal 1", which is a domestic terminal. So we have Delta Airlines for example, which flies domestically out of terminal 1, but internationally out of terminal I. You can imagine what happens: Passenger says "I'm on Delta, going international". OK, terminal I it is. Only it's a domestic flight to Atlanta, then on to Istanbul. In the passenger's mind, it's an international flight. Passenger dropped at wrong terminal. The reverse is also true. "I'm going on Delta, terminal 1." 99 percent of the time, they aren't. Over time, I've learned what to ask to get the proper info, but damn, there must be thousands of people who read "terminal 1" on their itinerary and end up missing their international flight because of this odd naming of the terminal. Been bugging me for years, good to have it off my chest :-)

As far as I know there is no "Terminal I" for international, there are two terminals, A and G, for International travel out of SFO. If you have been doing this for years I don't understand the confusion.

http://www.ifly.com/san-francisco-in...l/terminal-map

Please follow thread in the San Francisco Forum.
Thanks..
Obscure2k
TravelBuzz Moderator

There is indeed only one international terminal, divided into A side and G side. However, there is no "terminal A" or "terminal G". I understand your response--the map is correct until it calls A and G 'terminals'. How I wish it were correct! And for what it's worth, there's nothing at the airport reading "terminal I" either--it's only on the travel papers that passengers show me. Also fwiw, I've been doing this for 14 years. SFO finished the 'new' international terminal ~2000, and this "terminal I" stuff still comes at me weekly.

This is funny
 

I fly out of SFO on International Flights as well as domestic flights. If a flight is going CDG-SFO then you tell people to meet them at the Arrivals Hall outside Customs. But if the flight is going from LHR-ORD-SFO you would tell them to meet you at the baggage claim at the Domestic Terminal.

And its not a big mistake as you can walk using the interior walkways from the International to Domestic Terminal(I have done this for fun and for exercise). You can walk inside without waiting for the AirTrain or outside in the cold walking to the terminals.

There needs to be better signs that direct passengers to and from the international terminal to the other terminals.

When the Presidents Club at SFO was open I would wait there for my ride or before a flight then I would walk around using the inside walkways to my respective terminal such as United.

Point in case whats a 5 minute walk to a passenger who told you the driver the wrong terminal? Its not your fault as they told you where to drop them off and you did as told ROTFL.

I've never heard "Terminal I" before - perhaps it's a DL thing? I have only ever heard "International Terminal" or "Terminal 1." And "Terminal A" and "Terminal G" are frequently used designators here on Flyertalk.

Pedantically speaking, it's one terminal, the International Terminal, with two concourses, International Terminal-Concourse A and International Terminal-Concourse G.

Thousands? I'm a little skeptical of that. Any confusion between Terminal 1 and "I" as it might be printed on someone's itinerary should be cleared up pretty quickly when they see the gate number. The numbering runs from 1 in International Terminal A through 102 in International Terminal G with domestic gates numbers in the middle. If someone is changing planes at SFO, they should be focused on gate number, and there is no ambiguity there.

For those taking their outbound flight from SFO, they really should know the difference between an international flight and a domestic one. The signs as you approach SFO clearly distinguish domestic/international, and they also indicate which international flights depart from domestic terminals.

I don't doubt that some people still end up going to the wrong terminal, but I doubt this happens at SFO more than the typical airport of its size.

I've actually done it myself, but only because there are some international flights that depart from the domestic terminals. Alaska flights to Mexico at one time departed from the International Terminal, but now they depart from Terminal 1.

That's understandable, but a different situation than what the OP is discussing. Virgin America was particularly vexing on gate location until they moved into the newly renovated T2. Before that, it was mostly IT-A, but also a few gates in IT-G.

Generally these are foreign folks, but not always. And the gate number isn't usually at the top of the attention list for most dropoffs. It's baby steps from the hotel to the airplane. Anyway, if thousands is too many, I'll lower it to the high hundreds. But ten years is alot of flights.[/QUOTE]

They should but they don't. Hell, we service SMF as well, and there's no shortage of people telling us that they need to be at the airport three hours early for their international flight, even though it stops in Atlanta first.

Maybe not, and maybe SFO isn't even responsible for coming up with this "Terminal I" business. I'd love to know who is, though. Somewhere down the line, "international terminal" became "terminal I" to a bunch of travel companies like Expedia, Travelocity, etc. And I find it hard to believe that these companies just made it up themselves, as messing with your customer's head just isn't part of a good business model.

Here's my unofficial take on the matter.

For years, T-1 was the South Terminal. T-3 was the North Terminal. T-2, pre-closure and reconstruction was the old International Terminal (and was to be again the Central Terminal). The new International Terminal opened (containing the A and G piers, and the only piers in the airport where the gate # has an associated letter). Note - no gate number is ever repeated in this airport, except some gates will have an A and B component. After this time, South and North were renumbered 1 and 3.

It appears that the "master plan" would have been for each gate to have a pier letter and then number component, as the piers are all lettered, i.e., the AS gates are all in B, and numbered 20, 22 and 24. This has not occurred, and it really isn't necessary because no gate numbers are repeated, and there already is some logic (i.e., A has 1 through teens, B has 20s and 30s, C has 40s, D has 50s, E/F 60-90 (all behind common security), G has 91-end.

So, "I" was given its "code" designator (in GDS systems, not the airport's doing) when it could only be "confused" with North and South.

Just my observations.

Makes more sense than anything else so far. It does to be some default code that airline ticket vendors use. Don't know, but I aims to find out!

The only thing I've seen that says "Terminal I" is on GDS printouts that show arrival/departure location of a flight. I've had to do a double-take to see if it's an eye or a one.