San Francisco International Airport
Facts on SFO
SFO opened on May 7, 1927 on a leased 150-acre cow pasture and was originally named 'Mills Field Municipal Airport of San Francisco' after the Mills estate that owned the land; it became 'San Francisco Airport' in 1931 and gained the 'International' in its name after World War II as overseas service expanded.
Source: Wikipedia
SFO's Terminal 1 was renamed Harvey Milk Terminal 1 in 2019, making it the world's first airport terminal named after a leader of the LGBTQ community.
Source: Wikipedia
SFO installed a 450-foot moving walkway in Concourse B on May 20, 1964, which was the world's longest moving walkway at the time.
Source: Wikipedia
SFO's earliest scheduled carriers in the late 1920s and 1930s were Western Air Express, Maddux Air Lines and Century Pacific Lines; United Airlines, formed in 1934, quickly became the dominant carrier with Douglas DC-3 service to Los Angeles and New York starting in January 1937.
Source: Wikipedia
During World War II the airport was taken over as a Coast Guard and Army Air Corps base under the name Naval Auxiliary Air Facility Mills Field, forcing Pan American's Pacific and Alaska seaplane operations to relocate there from Treasure Island in 1944.
Source: Wikipedia
In July 1959 SFO installed one of the first jetway bridges in the United States, and that same year TWA began the airport's first jet service, nonstop Boeing 707 flights to New York's Idlewild Airport.
Source: Wikipedia
SFO's parallel runway pairs are only 750 feet apart at the centerline, too close for simultaneous instrument landings in poor visibility -- a constraint that has shaped decades of expansion proposals, including a rejected 1990s plan to extend runways onto 1,300 acres of fill in San Francisco Bay.
Source: Wikipedia
The International Terminal that opened in December 2000 is the largest international terminal in North America and the largest building in the world built entirely on base isolators, a seismic design meant to let it ride out earthquakes.
Source: Wikipedia
SFO closed after the Loma Prieta earthquake struck on October 17, 1989, but reopened the very next morning after only minor runway damage was found and repaired.
Source: Wikipedia
SFO hosts one of the world's largest single-site aircraft maintenance bases, including the Superbay hangar -- built in the 1970s at 420,550 square feet and able to hold four Boeing 747s at once.
Source: Wikipedia
Since December 2013 SFO has run a "Wag Brigade" of trained therapy dogs -- joined in 2016 by a Juliana-breed therapy pig named Lilou -- that roam the terminals wearing "Pet Me!" vests to calm nervous travelers.
Source: Wikipedia