Local Airport Makes Good

According to an organization that apparently is tasked with the fascinating duty of recording on-time airport arrivals, the Oakland airport is the very best on this continent at receiving people who, for reasons best know only to themselves, want to go to Oakland. Among the 40 busiest North American airports, Oakland is number one with 87% of inbound flights arriving within 15 minutes of their scheduled arrival time. It helps that Oakland's two most active airlines, Southwest and Hawaiian, are themeselves the top nation and regional airlines, respectively, for on-time arrivals.

In the fifty or so arrivals I've had in the last two years, my general sense is that these statistics are correct. My flight Friday night was actually several minutes early, which has happened more than once.

This must sting the San Francsico airport people just a bit. Far larger and more glamorous by name, SFO is a well-known delay generator. The slightest amount of fog or cloud cover will trigger flight pattern restrictions. In a city notorious for its foggy conditions, SFO has no hope of ever being a paragon of timeliness. Most savvy buisinesspeople fly to the Bay Area through Oakland because it is just as easy to get to San Francisco by BART from the Oakland airport, and the likelihood of arriving on time at the airport itself is much higher. The time saved walking through the much smaller Oakland terminal is a significant, albeit not often considered, factor as well.

So, the good news is that if you are flying to Oakland, chances are very good that you will get there on time. The bad news, of course, is that you are flying to Oakland.