My Airport History: San Francisco (SFO)

San Francisco International Airport
San Francisco, California, United States
First visit: 22 March 2001
flighthistorian.com/airports/SFO

Back in high school, I’d flown out on my uncle’s frequent flier miles to visit Stanford (before ultimately deciding to stay in the Midwest and attend Rose-Hulman instead). This trip was intended to be DAY–CVG–SFO–CVG–DAY, invoking the nearly unnecessary Comair-operated DAY–CVG segment (at 64 miles apart, it’s faster to just drive to CVG than take the layover). However, while I was out in the Bay Area, Comair pilots went on strike, and my returning CVG–DAY segment was cancelled. My rescheduled return flight ended up being SJC–ATL–DAY instead (so I only got one visit to SFO on that trip), but Delta bumped me up to first class for the trouble.

That wasn’t the only trip where I arrived in and departed from different Bay Area airports; my 2009 San José and Dallas trip had me flying into SJC and out of SFO.