DELee

Ha! "Inconvenience!" - those of us who are forced to connect through SFO are trapped there when inbound flights are under flow control due to weather and/or construction or both. I've already been forced to overnight at SFO hotels on UA nickel multiple times this year because of this very problem. Because of these misconnects, UA has ponied up ETCs and I've had to cancel business meetings as well as family events and other trips that I wasn't able to get to because a) UA has reduced the number of LAX-SFO connections and b) UA has curtailed service in and out of LAX to c) pump up this "great hub".

It is even worse for others who try to fly UA but then have even fewer options connecting elsewhere on the West Coast.

David

sinoflyer

Under Robert Crandall, AA bought AirCal and had built a sizable hub at SJC by the early 1990s. AA couldn't make SJC work, and in the mid-1990s began to pull back. QQ (Reno Air) then came in and started a hub in AA's vacuum. AA bought QQ at the height of the dotcom bubble, so SJC became an AA hub again. SJC-TPE and SJC-CDG were (in)famous AA routes, for the fact that they failed within a few days. AA closed the SJC hub for the second time around 2004. SJC-NRT survived the closure, and continued for a couple more years. "Nerd Bird" lasted longer, but it too went away.

I agree with some previous posts stating that the majority of trips to/from the airport start/end at the home, not the place of work. In that regard, SJC may be in the heart of Silicon Valley, but SFO is the best positioned airport for Silicon Valley (also VC) traffic. Perhaps it takes an objective observer from L.A. to acknowledge that.

findark

Are 28 R/L used for commercial ops at OAK? I used to fly out of OAK ages ago when I was less aviation savvy and always thought it was a one-runway show; was puzzled to fly over it in recent years and see the other runways.

Regardless, with the fact that 28 is the dominant direction for wind and the "pincer" shape between 28 and 30, I think OAK is effectively restricted to 2 of 3 runways whenever winds are from the west.

I'd echo Kacee that the wealthiest stretch of the Bay Area is all convenient to SFO. I don't know anyone other than the city council that calls San Jose the heart of Silicon Valley; it's more like the southern edge. There's practically nothing in the 180 degrees south of downtown SJ except tract castle homes and shopping malls - hopefully I don't offend anyone with that

Also with the mid-Market tax thing, there has been quite a lot of tech growth in the City proper, so I think SFO has the local economy covered very well, geographically speaking.

WineCountryUA

I think you are right, 30 is used by the major carriers. 28R/L are connected to the General Aviation usage

minnyfly

In the grand scheme of things, that's an inconvenience to them. SFO weather delays are a necessary evil to the airlines.

sinoflyer

I don't necessarily disagree. I interpret the classical definition of "Silicon Valley" as Santa Clara County, in an arc formed by Mountain View, Sunnyvale/Cupertino, San Jose, and Milpitas. The fact that the demography south of San Jose shifts decidedly to middle income spells SJC's doomed fate if another airline ever tries to revive a hub there to compete with SFO.

flyerbaby19

And from MV, SFO and SJC I think are equidistant by car. Easier to get to SFO with Caltrain/Bart versus VTA/Bus to SJC (I think...) although Uber is probably easier than public transit if we're talking wealthy MV google yuppies

Kacee

Except you've just excluded Palo Alto, which is generally understood to be the birthplace of "the Silicon Valley." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Garage.

sinoflyer

Okay, good point. I can't dispute that Silicon Valley can ostensibly mean the Bay Area, including the entire Peninsula all the way into downtown San Francisco. But on a weighted scale of tech firms, past and present, my perception is that the center of gravity is still closer to San Jose. Some of the higher profile companies and their HQs: Google (Mountain View), Apple (Cupertino), Yahoo (Sunnyvale), AMD (Sunnyvale), Nvidia (Santa Clara), Intel (Santa Clara), Adobe (San Jose), Western Digital (San Jose)... Nevertheless, even with those companies near SJC, I think we agree that SFO is the more convenient and preferred.

cerealmarketer

I don't think we'll ever see SJC turn into the EWR vs SFO's JFK like setup.

But if you live South of the Dumbarton on either side it's more convenient to hit up SJC and plenty of ways service will grow there. Kind of like Orange County vs LAX but without the curfew.

As for market size it's less about wealth unless you're trying to support a specialized product like PS.

Most biz travel is on other people's money - so being convenient to lots of people with good income but not quite wealthy is sufficient.

Though I agree the biggest wealth belt is MP/PA down to Saratoga / Los Gatos.

channa

Live in the city? They work in the city too. A lot of the tech growth in this economic cycle has happened in SF. Sure there's still a ton in SV, but the tech area has spread between the two. The younger crowd is attracted to SF, and businesses know this.


Which is why a limited focus city/mini hub a la what AS is doing is perfect for SJC.


Right, it's just way too inconvenient for where many people want to go, which for many is SF. The advantage of the 3 New York airports is that they are centered around Manhattan, which is the clear business and tourism center. The Bay Area is a bit more spread out, though.

findark

but also Hewlett-Packard (Palo Alto), Facebook (Menlo Park), Oracle (Redwood Shores), not to mention smaller/newer but hardly tiny companies like Uber (SF) and Twitter (SF).

The biggest wealth spike is a bit north of that - Hillsborough, Woodside, Portola Valley, Atherton, Los Altos Hills, etc. is where most of the deep VC pockets live.

It amused me to read

...because I instinctively agreed with it, but then I looked it up and SFO is 2.5x further than SJC from Mountain View. But I still feel like you need to go further south before it feels like a huge comparative burden to trek up to SFO.

I definitely agree that SJC makes sense for a local West Coast focus city a la AS and WN though. I think WN provides huge value for being the only carrier that essentially provides full pairwise coverage on QSF to QLA. When I'm eating most of the day to fly TCON or overwater, the extra distance to SFO is negligible, but for a day trip to LA, being able to fly SJC-BUR (or whatever pair suits that trip) is quite valuable.

spin88

DFW-EZE is the 37J config on AA, I have no idea if they get concept D or SuperDiamond, but both are much nicer than the last gen sCO seat. You are correct, AA is now all lie flat. What they are now doing is going back and putting PE on certain planes.

They are going in early December, so the PL at IAH, whenever UA gets it opened up.... does not figure.

My parents are not UA fans (courtesy of several recent issues on Hawaii flights), but they would also like to avoid DFW due to long walks. Bottom line is that United's product and service was simply not competitive. AA 321F > UA 739 F; AA J >> sCO J; AA Flagship Lounge with showers >>> UA CruddyClub.

If United wants to "win the west" they really need to look at their combination of service and product, neither are competitive at this point, and UA is falling further behind (SEA/PDX they gave up a long time ago; they are now definately sub-par at SAN; and LAX they are firmly in 3rd place)

There is nothing wrong with SFO's location. The issue is that when they expanded the airport's capacity back in the 90s under Willie Brown (adding the two new international terminals and redeveloping the old international terminal into what is now D) they did not reconfigure the runways, which are 800 feet apart. They had a plan to move the North W-E to the North, allowing simultaneous operations in bad weather, but did not press it at that time. They could have gotten it through with environmental mitigation elsewhere (buying up the salt ponds in the south bay) but did not, and I think the time has passed. What will "fix" SFO is when they have installed the technology for side by side bad weather landings and take-offs.

There is no way that they build a new airport, let alone one that is two+ hours by car from the main business hub (SF). A new airport and linkages would cost $50B+, which would pay for much of the High Speed Rail system. Once High Speed rail runs from LA to SF, and then up to Sacramento, it will reduce much of the current west coast shuttle flights which take up much of the landing spots.

For the same reason why ONT is not a major airport, much of the business traffic is from SF and points north, and a track to SJC or OAK is simply not in the cards. I am not saying that SJC/OAK don't deserve service they do. But it is like LAX, SFO is the central and most important airport, and always will be due to where businesses are located and people live.

p.s. I should add that AA tried to build a mini-hub at SJC, it ultimately failed because that for about 1/2 of the traffic that would use SJC, SFO was equally convenient, if not more convenient, and SFO has many more flights. What SJC needs is service to hubs and to major linked citeis.

findark

HSR is about as much of a pipe dream as a new airport. Even if built as proposed, it would be an almost 3 hour trip and I'm skeptical it would really hamstring commuting by air where the time is much shorter. I think the real problem is that, unlike the NYC/DC corridor, there really is no convenient place in LA to get off a train that beats an airport.

LarkSFO

^

I appreciate your optimism!

Who needs high speed rail when options like this are available?

We took the luxury overnight bus from SF to LA