Struggling Oakland Wants To Rename Its Airport ‘San Francisco,’ but the Real SFO Objects

A push to rename Metropolitan Oakland International Airport as the “San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport” is being met with resistance from the dominant San Francisco International Airport ahead of a vote next week.Officials at the Port of Oakland, which operates the Oakland airport, announced last week that they favor renaming the airport in order to make it clear how close Oakland is to San Francisco.“The name modification will use the main geographic feature of our region to identify its location, the San Francisco Bay,” the interim president of aviation at the Oakland airport, Craig Simon, said in a statement.He added, “This is not about the City and County of San Francisco, or San Mateo County, but about our region and creating jobs in Oakland and throughout the East Bay. No one owns the title to the San Francisco Bay.”The chief executive of Visit Oakland also predicts that the name change would spur more traffic at the airport, bringing more visitors to Oakland, and spurring economic activity in the area.The proposal at the Oakland airport, though, is meeting with resistance from officials at the San Francisco International Airport, which is just 30 miles away.“We are deeply concerned about the potential for customer confusion and disservice that could result from this proposed renaming,” San Francisco International Airport’s director, Ivar Satero, said in a statement.Mr. Satero added that, though the airports would retain their three-letter airport codes, “either through a misunderstanding of its physical location or its perceived relationship to SFO,” the name change could be confusing.The conflict is set to come to a head at an April 11 meeting of Port of Oakland officials, where they will vote on the name change as well as a handful of other upgrades to the airport, like bathroom renovations.While San Francisco airport officials bristle at the potential name change, some airline executives are supporting the Oakland airport in its proposed move.“Oakland helped put us on the map in California and we’re wholeheartedly supportive of this rebranding that acknowledges OAK’s economic position and influence in the San Francisco Bay area while staying true to its Oakland roots,” the marketing communications vice president at SouthwestAirlines said.Others have suggested that confusion over Oakland’s geographic proximity to San Francisco is responsible for the underperformance of some routes at the airport.“Market research and interviews with airline partners have shown that routes have not performed as well as they should have due to the lack of geographic awareness, making air carriers reluctant to sustain and add new routes in Oakland,” Mr. Simon said.

Struggling Oakland Wants To Rename Its Airport ‘San Francisco,’ but the Real SFO Objects

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