In 1927, with the introduction of commercial air travel, San Francisco leased 150 acres of cow pasture from D.O. Mills in San Mateo County as a temporary experiment to see if the City would benefit from an airport. On May 7th Mayor James Rolph[1] dedicated the Mills Field Municipal Airport of San Francisco. There were only a few wooden structures and poorly maintained runways. Famous aviator Charles Lindberg complained bitterly about the airfield after his landing gear got stuck in a rut. In 1930, deciding an airport was warranted and that the location was ideal, the City purchased the site and over the next ten years acquired the surrounding land. On June 9, 1931 the name of the airport officially changed to the San Francisco Airport (SFO). While technically located 13 miles south of the City, SFO is owned and operated by the City and County of San Francisco. In its early years SFO was the hub of Boeing Air Transport (predecessor of United Airlines, renamed in 1934). A terminal building was opened in 1937 and replaced in 1954.
Ellen Church (1904-1965) was a San Francisco registered nurse and pilot. She was not allowed to fly commercial aircraft because she was a woman; however, she convinced Boeing to hire “sky girls”: registered nurses who accompanied pilots to help convince a skeptical public that flying was safe. Church’s first flight as a sky girl was a 20 hour flight on May 15, 1930 from Mills Field to Chicago (there were 13 stops and 14 passengers). Sky girls were required to be registered nurses, single, under the age of 25, less than 115 pounds and no taller than 5’4”. These women were also expected to not only tend to the needs of passengers but help with luggage, fueling and assisting pilots push aircraft into hangers. Unfortunately, Church’s career ended 18 months after it began because of injuries sustained in an automobile accident. But other airlines began following Boeing’s example and within a few years “stewardesses” were a regular feature on every flight.
During World War II[2] SFO was used as a Coast Guard base and Army Air Corps training ground. After the war, the name of the airport changed to San Francisco International Airport[3] with Pan Am introducing service to Hawaii, Figi and New Zealand. The first nonstop flight from San Francisco to New York occurred in 1954.
The airport has 4 terminals and a total of 115 gates arranged alphabetically in a counterclockwise ring:
Terminal 1, built in 1963, is now called the Harvey Milk Terminal with artwork memorializing Milk’s life.
Terminal 2, built in 1954 and remodeled in 2011, was the original terminal, then the international terminal, then the hub for Alaska Airlines. A control tower on the roof of the building was demolished in 2016 after being deemed seismically unfit and replaced with a tower designed to look like a torch located between Terminals 1 and 2.
Terminal 3 was built in 1979 and remodeled in 2015. This terminal is the hub for United Airlines.
The International Terminal, built in 2000, houses a BART[4] station completed in 2003, a medical clinic and the SFO Museum[5], the first museum located in an international airport.
There have been five airplane crashes at SFO resulting in passenger fatalities: a 1937 United flight (11 total fatalities), 1953 Western Airlines Flight 366 (8 total fatalities), 1953 British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines Flight 304 (19 total fatalities) and 2013 Asiana Airlines Flight 214 (3 fatalities). On September 11, 2001, a flight from Boston bound for SFO was hijacked by terrorists and diverted to Washington DC. It was believed that the hijackers’ destination was either the US Capital or the White House, but passengers attempted to regain control and the plane crashed in Pennsylvania, killing all on board.
Today SFO is major gateway for flights to destinations across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. It is the second busiest in California, the 7th busiest in the United States and the 24th busiest in the world. During the 1990s Dot-Com Bubble, SFO was the 6th busiest airport in the world, though traffic decreased significantly after the Dot-Com Bust in 2001.
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