SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) – Ahead of the long Labor Day holiday weekend, air-travel is starting to pick back up. And a once-busy terminal is reopening at SFO.
After being shut down for the past four months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, concourse boarding level-A has reopened in the international terminal at SFO airport in San Francisco.
“This is obviously half of our gate capacity in our international terminal,” said SFO spokesperson Doug Yakel.
Yakel said there was so little flight activity at the beginning of the pandemic that there was no need for the facility to be opened. However, now things are starting to pick up.
“Thankfully international airlines have been slowly returning flights back to SFO. At the lowest point in April, we had only three airlines operating international flights at SFO and now we’re up to 19,” Yakel added.
While SFO remains far short of the pre-pandemic average number of 75,000 daily passengers, Yakel said the number of travelers going through TSA checkpoint is trending in the right direction.
“In April, we saw days when we weren’t even seeing 2,000 people a day going through our security check points. Now that number is up to 12,000 to 13,000 per day,” according to Yakel.
If you haven’t been inside an airport or boarded a plane in 2020 here is what you need to know:
“Number one, you should expect that you’re going to have to where a face mask at all times in the airport. The other thing passengers should expect is physical distancing, and then obviously hand hygiene and sanitation is a huge part of our airport experience right now. We have installed hundreds of hand sanitizers through our terminals,” Yakel said.
SFO officials say reopening international concourse “A” is an encouraging sign of the return of airline confidence here in the Bay Area.
Latest Stories: