Short-term delay mitigation strategies for San Francisco International Airport

San Francisco International Airport (SFO) is typical of many large airports in that rapid growth in air travel has outpaced its available runway capacity, leading to serious delays. At the same time, SFO represents a unique circumstance because of the role of its local climate, and thus careful analysis is required to address its delay situation. The airport is in the process of planning a major runway reconfiguration project that would largely solve the problem of weather-related congestion delays, but this massive project will take many years. Presented are the results of an effort to design potential short-term strategies to reduce weather-related congestion delay at SFO while the runway reconfiguration proceeds. Designing measures to reduce delay outside the context of runway expansion is a complex task that requires balancing multiple considerations-issues of equity, access, legal jurisdiction-along with considerations of efficiency and airport performance. The kinds of thinking and analysis required in considering these types of delay-reduction measures are explored.