San Francisco International Airport is located 13 miles (21 km) south of San Francisco, California, located in San Mateo County and adjacent to the cities of Millbrae and San Bruno.
It is a hub of United Airlines and has the IATA Airport Code SFO. The airport was first opened on May 7, 1927. It now has service to other destinations within the United States, as well as Canada, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Australasia.
It is one of three major airports in the San Francisco Bay Area. It can experience significant delays in adverse weather, when half of its runways cannot be used. Airport planners have floated proposals to extend the airport's runways further into San Francisco Bay in order to accomodate the next generation of super-jumbo aircraft. In order to expand into the bay, the airport would have to restore bayland elsewhere in the Bay Area. Such proposals have met resistance among environmental groups, fearing damage to the habitat of animals living there and bay water quality. As such, San Francisco International Airport will probably remain popular but stagnant while its two neighbor airports (Oakland International Airport in Oakland, California and San Jose International Airport in San Jose, California) will continue to grow.
SFO has seemingly been under continuous expansion through the decades. The latest projects completed were a new $1 billion international terminal opened in December 2000 and an extension of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system to the airport opened June 22, 2003.
If Project Bojinka had not been discovered after a fire in Manila, Philippines, one or more aircraft owned by a U.S. carrier/s in this airport would have blown up over the Pacific Ocean on January 21, 1995 as part of the project's first phase.
On January 31, 2000, Alaska Airlines Flight 261, which was headed on a Puerto Vallarta, Mexico-San Francisco International Airport-Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in SeaTac, Washington (near Seattle) route, crashed into the Pacific Ocean, killing everyone on board.
One of the four hijacked airplanes that crashed on September 11, 2001, United Airlines Flight 93, was headed to San Francisco International Airport from Newark International Airport.
SFO has four terminals, one of which - Terminal 2 - is currently being renovated. Terminal 2 served as the former terminal for international flights until the new International Terminal opened in 2000.
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Terminals
Terminal 1
Terminal 3
International Terminal
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