CAROLE SHIFRIN SAN FRANCISCO
San Francisco, which has built itself a spanking new international terminal, is one of several West Coast cities to benefit from flying Asian routes
A gleaming new international terminal at San Francisco International Airport has paved the way for what airport officials hope will be annual double digit growth in international passenger traffic over the next five years.
Light years away from the dark, 1954-era facility it replaced, the new terminal is significantly larger than its predecessor and has all the high-tech "bells and whistles" and passenger amenities needed to accommodate substantial future growth. Airport officials say the terminal will be able to accommodate four Airbus A380s - two at the ends of each concourse - with little change. The $1 billion facility has 24 widebody gates, with two jet bridges at each aircraft for easier boarding and disembarking.
Passenger handling has been improved with 168 new advanced-technology check-in counters located along six islands in a large, airy, glass- and-metal departures lobby. The terminal has twice as much baggage carousel capacity, while expanded and streamlined customs and immigration facilities are in place to process 5,000 passengers an hour, four times as many as before. Airport operators promise that arriving passengers can be "out the door" with their baggage in 45 minutes. It often used to take as long as two hours.
A significant addition to the cost of building the new terminal was the extensive use of seismic devices to protect against damage from the earthquakes that are a fact of life in the Bay Area. The terminal foundation uses 267 base isolators, which employ friction pendulum bearings - solid steel slider balls 1.5m (5ft) in diameter - to allow the building to move 56cm (22 inches) in any direction to counter the effects of ground movement during an earthquake without breaking - airport officials say - a single window. The terminal is designed to withstand earthquakes with a magnitude of more than eight on the Richter scale.
The international facility is the centrepiece of a $2.4 billion airport expansion programme. Early next year, the building will be connected to other airport terminals, parking and car rental areas by an "AirTrain" light rail system. Also next year, an airport station of the Bay Area Rapid Transit is due to come on line, linking the airport with downtown San Francisco.
Because airport officials wanted to avoid the embarrassing teething problems that accompanied airport openings at Denver, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur, they last year delayed the opening from June, to September and then to mid-December to assure themselves that all systems - including telecommunications, computer, baggage, building and environmental - were operating without problems.
The airport even assigned hundreds of people to take a dozen "mock flights" from the terminal, checking luggage, boarding aircraft and then returning through customs and immigration to make sure everything operated properly. Charter airlines operated some flights from the terminal initially and then scheduled flights were phased in over five days.
The 230,000m2 (2.5 million ft2) terminal has over 13,000m2 of retail space, including 16 San Francisco-based restaurants. These are accessible to visitors as well as passengers, as the gate concourses are not sterile. Among the two dozen retailers is Callaway Golf, at whose shop passengers can hit golf balls while waiting for a flight. Officials say the new facility will be used by about 8 million passengers this year, a level they expect to grow to 12 million by 2006. Currently, 24 carriers operate 87 daily nonstops to 30 destinations.
United Airlines, which carried an estimated 3.5 million international passengers in 2000, had a 51.6% share of the 40 million passengers who used the airport. It currently uses 12 gates in the new terminal to operate 18 daily flights to 15 international destinations.
With common-use counters and gates to be assigned by the airport, no airline is guaranteed exclusive use of any space. However, as a practical course, United and its Star Alliance partners have full use of one of the two 12-gate concourses. "It gives us a lot of breathing room," says Frank Kent, United's managing director for northern California.
In fact, Kent says plans for the new terminal helped spur United to inaugurate four new nonstop routes - to Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul and Frankfurt - and from the start of the summer timetable in April, it will add a third daily nonstop to London. "As demand is established and aircraft become available, we will look at new opportunities," he says. "San Francisco is United's largest international hub. Period."
United used to route passengers bound for Beijing and Shanghai through its Tokyo hub, but now operates daily direct service to Beijing and flies five times a week to Shanghai, the latter service going daily from April. Kent says traffic has remained strong on its two daily flights to Narita, however. United's international load factors from San Francisco are bolstered by strong domestic feed, which includes more than 210 daily flights to 46 cities.
American and San Jose
With a 6.2% market share, American Airlines is San Francisco's second largest carrier. But while the carrier is adding flights at the airport, enhancing service levels along the West Coast, it is unlikely to offer any international flights there.
Instead, American bases its West Coast gateway at San Jose International Airport, 44 miles south of San Francisco and adjacent to the still-growing Silicon Valley.
American flies daily to Tokyo from San Jose and this summer adds daily services to both Taipei and to Paris - San Jose's first service to any point in Europe. "San Jose has become a major focus city for us, clearly capable of supporting expanded international service," an American official says. It does not have the fog and runway capacity problems that plague San Francisco, and many people on "the peninsula" between the two cities find it easier to get to San Jose.
American last year strengthened San Jose with new nonstop flights from several US cities, and with the summer timetable it will operate 74 daily flights to 20 destinations. Mike Gunn, American's executive vice-president for marketing and planning, says strong ties between San Jose and Taiwan make the carrier optimistic about the Taipei route. Nearly 50 Taiwanese venture-capital firms are in the Silicon Valley and 60 high-tech companies from Taiwan's Hsinchu Science Park have offices there. "All of this makes Taipei a natural fit for San Jose," Gunn says. He says American will codeshare with Taiwan's EVA Airways, which can take passengers beyond Taipei to other points in Asia.
Elsewhere, American's intercontinental service from the West Coast is limited primarily to placing its code on oneworld partners' flights, although it operates a daily service from Los Angeles to London and a seasonal service to Paris. It also flies daily from Seattle to Tokyo, in what is essentially a point-to-point market. United and Northwest Airlines - which also operate flights between Seattle and Tokyo - both have sizable hub operations in Tokyo.
Even though airlines have been using longer-range aircraft to add nonstop flights to points in Japan and China from New York and interior US cities, major West Coast airports have continued to thrive as gateways to the Asia-Pacific region.
Los Angeles
The number of international passengers at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) - the largest of the West Coast gateways - grew to 17.4 million last year (see table below). International traffic represents about 26% of the airport's total passengers, with more than 60 foreign and US carriers operating international flights from LAX to a much wider array of destinations than other western gateways. Los Angeles also traditionally has had stronger service links to Mexico and to Australia and New Zealand than other West Coast airports.
"Los Angeles International is the JFK of the west," says Craig Jenks, principal at Airline/Aircraft Projects. Undominated by a US carrier, LAX is the West Coast airport at which foreign carriers, particularly from the Far East, typically initiate US services. He notes that each of the two carriers from Taiwan and from South Korea - Asiana, Korean, EVA and China Airlines - have two daily flights to LAX, as does Cathay Pacific from Hong Kong.
The LAX-Tokyo route, which most days sees nine daily flights, is especially fragmented, Jenks says, because of fifth-freedom rights awarded years ago to allow refuelling. These rights allow such carriers as Singapore Airways, Thai Airways International and Korean Air to serve the market, even though they no longer need refuelling stops. It is fifth-freedom rights which allow Varig to operate a Tokyo-Los Angeles-Sïo Paulo route. Japan Airlines operated this service as well before replacing it with a more expedient Tokyo-New York-Sïo Paulo routing.
As at San Francisco, United is the leading carrier in Los Angeles, but with a much smaller overall market share of 22.6%. In 1999, the last year for which LAX has complete figures, United was top international carrier with 1.4 million passengers. Although United has elevated Los Angeles to "hub" status, it has not added new international flights in the past year and has no immediate plans to do so.
Vancouver and Portland
After LAX, Vancouver ranks second in international passenger numbers, followed closely by San Francisco. An option for Asian carriers at Vancouver is that fifth-freedom rights allow them to carry local traffic to US points. Cathay Pacific, for instance, flies passengers from Vancouver to New York, something anti-cabotage provisions preclude it from doing between San Francisco and JFK.
A major exception to the trend of robust international growth is Portland, Oregon. Portland at one time had five daily nonstops to the Pacific Rim and was considered Delta Air Lines' gateway to Asia. This summer, however, Delta will drop its last two international flights from Portland - to Tokyo and Nagoya, Japan - shifting the Tokyo service to New York Kennedy and the Nagoya flight to Los Angeles, where the carrier already operates a daily frequency to Tokyo. Delta dropped service to Seoul, Osaka and Fukuoka, Japan, a few years ago during the downturn in Asia.
"Patterns of flights to Asia have changed fundamentally in the past few years as a result of the 1997 US-Japan bilateral agreement, reducing the viability of our gateway in Portland," explains Delta chief executive Leo Mullin. "Capacity to Japan has increased by nearly 25%, but much of the traffic is being carried nonstop from interior hubs, bypassing the West Coast."
Portland has suffered, but its ultimate viability as a gateway was hampered by a small local market, while traffic growth at San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle and Vancouver, each with local attractions and sizeable Asian populations, has remained strong.
Now that San Francisco has a new international facility, and gate and terminal space is available to all, the airlines and airport operator have turned to the airport's other major problem: the antiquated runway configuration that severely limit flights during its frequent poor weather or fog conditions. The US Federal Aviation Administration rated the airport as the nation's fourth worst in terms of aircraft delays last year.
"The good news is the new terminal; the bad news is we continue to be very frustrated and terribly constrained because of the runways," United's Kent says. The two main runways are only 230m (750ft) apart, and when the ceiling drops below 3,300ft, the airport cannot have simultaneous landings, he explains. That means landings drop from 60 "on the best day" to 28 an hour. Installation of new radar systems could increase runway capacity incrementally during bad weather, but more ambitious plans for the construction of new runways - possibly by filling in part of the bay - are expensive, controversial and years away from fruition. Until then United will at least have the consolation of the gleaming new terminal.
Source: Airline Business
