nnn

OAK would be out of the way. Easier to go straight.

Eastbay1K

Do you have any idea how high the Benicia/Martinez bridge goes over the Carquinez Strait? You will cross this SMF/Martinez, unless you take 160 to 4, which will take you a leisurely 2 hours+ on a windy levee road (which can have pea soup fog during the winter), and you'll still have to cross the Antioch Bridge, which is fairly high, but is quick. But it is only 1 lane in each direction, with a solid median, so if you get stuck, you are stuck. Alternatively, you could take 5 southbound to 4 west, which will even take longer, but you'll only have to cross a few draw bridges.

Seriously, you could drive SNA to anywhere in the Bay Area faster than your door to door travel plans, and that is with things running on schedule.

And as said above, flying ORD/SMF is much quicker than SNA/SMF.

WN isn't an airline I'd want to fly all over on - in fact, the longest WN flight I've had in the past 15+ years has been Bay Area / So Cal.

I also don't know what your corporate travel policies will be, but when you're regularly spending $600+ for SNA/SMF because that's what's left on the RJs, the company is going to wonder why. That you missed your meetings/inspections/whatever you do by a day because UA couldn't get you there repeatedly is another story. It will happen. It will happen more than once. SFO is in the top tier of available airport food. It will get old.

I fly 50-75K paid premium miles a year, on my own dime, plus an award trip or two. And when I need a short hop around the state, other than SFO/LAX, I generally fly WN. I'm not proud. I'm practical.

Eastbay1K

One train every 20 minutes, change of train in Oakland (or further up in SF, depending on time of day), get off at Oakland Coliseum, board Air Bart Bus (will become another train service come end of year), go to airport, wait for rental car shuttle, bus will take you to lot, get car. I'd estimate 1:30 from SFO arrival to OAK rental car departure on a good day.

Cargojon

Finally someone who shares my phobia!

And yes, I can handle many bridges, here the ones that get me are the big NY ones - if I have to cross the Hudson, I take the train. Because as you say, I dont care about a tube under the river, especially if im not driving

haddon90

i used to live in newport and used SNA a lot. one of my favorite airport. with that said, if you're doing norcal...stay with WN. but DEN, ORD, and anything east UA is solid.

drvannostren

SURE just flaunt it to everyone. I'm jealous. Even to move to Chicago I'm tired of Vancouver, but I HAAAAAAAAATE the blackhawks. I'm flying out of SNA after the Canucks visit Kings/Ducks in Nov, looking forward to checking out another airport! SNA-SFO-PDX-YVR...love those RJs!

unavaca

I'm a UA 1K and I still fly quite a bit of WN intra-California. WN is the defacto intra-California commuter airline these days. It's the only carrier to service all 3 Bay Area airports and all 4 LA-area airports, all at frequencies that can't be beat by any of the legacies.

enviroian

SNA-SFO air fares are currently $163 round trip on either UA or WN. I find this amazing to be honest as every trip I currently take within my region to MSP, DTW, PAH, CMH, EWR, PHL is well north of $400. Here I was a month ago applauding UA's new mileage accrual based on spend. Go figure!

Face your demons I say. Before I moved to Chicago I couldn't drive over any bridge. I was forced to do such in my area and it's not an issue. I will drive that damn Bay Bridge if it's the last thing I do and do it with no worries ^

PV_Premier

SFO-SMF is constantly sold out and often delayed hopelessly or canceled. Next available flight often means waiting til the next day. WN to OAK is the way to do this trip for the OP. Anything else would be really just needlessly torturing ones self.

channa

If you book in advance, you can get this route for $59 or $69 one way ($118 - $138 RT) if you catch a sale. There's currently a $69 OW fare on this route.

$400 RT buys you First Class.

The advantage of WN is no change fees, so if your trip gets scrapped, you can cancel your ticket and use it for something else later. But if you need to tweak a time, WN can be costly -- there's no change fee, but there's a fare difference, so if the fare is $200 walk up, and you paid $69, that's a $130 fee to go early.

The advantage of UA is SDC (which can be free if you have the status), so last-minute tweaks can be cheaper on UA.

HeadInTheClouds

Can't you just bear the 405 for those trips and get to LAX if that desperate to avoid WN and still stick with UA? That would be a better plan in my book than dealing with the SFO UX connections.

I'm no big fan of WN, but I couldn't agree more that for intra-CA stuff, it's the way to go. I have no issue with WN for these types of flights, and the minor UA miles being lost on short haul stuff like that isn't much more than a shoulder shrug to me. Just my $0.02, but having lived in the midwest & the west coast both, the business-traveler culture in the midwest just seems to be much more anti-WN, where on the west coast, WN is much more accepted as normal. Probably has to do with the depth of history WN has on these routes. A lot of money flies WN flights out of BUR for example.

Also: It's one thing if you're in your hometown (ORD) when UX delays cause you grief on a single segment hop. When it's a connection at play, the pain level goes up by big magnitudes.

drewsnav

edited

enviroian

Reading the replies on this post of mine over and over again it's become quite clear it would be foolish for me to fly into SFO on UA. Flying WN to OAK is much closer to Benecia/Martinez and won't have to deal with the Bay Bridge riff raff either. Oh well. Considering how much time I'll be spending there it's a shame I will be losing out on that UA miles/segments but unless I want to fly to SFO and drive south the Dumbarton bridge and over (insane and silly) WN it is.

LASUA1K

You can earn WN points rather quickly if you buy up. I fly ORD-Midwest on WN and I earn a free one way ticket on a 400.00 roundtrip. Thats of course due to my status, but if you fly enough you can also earn double eventually. My fares are all last minute so they carry a higher price.

enviroian

I can change my UA flights within 24 hours to another (same destination) later or earlier flight for no charge. Does WN offer the same?