San Francisco Airport

❌ Not Verified | Every time we fly into SFO there is always a delay due to traffic. Why does this only ever happen here? Is there a shortage of air traffic controllers? We are to the point of rather flying into Oakland.

✅ Trip Verified | As usual very long queues at immigration. They seriously need to modify their immigration hall; its too small and cramped for handling so many international arrivals all the time. There are substantial immigration counters but very few staff. The baggage area is also very small and gets crowded because the flights arrive in quick succession but the immigration takes time, so there's a lot of baggage waiting to be collected. Customs is fast and they don't bother you much.

✅ Trip Verified | As a seasoned traveller I am accustomed to arriving at chaotic airports but never in a million years expected to witness such poor customer service / organisation at a US airport! Arrived on A380 flight from London at the same time as an Air France flight. 10 minute walk to passport check not too bad but that is as good as it got! Met by a very rude SFO staff member whom herded us like cattle into the international queue. It was at this point that it dawned on me I was going to be there a while ... a very long while to be precise. 10+ CBP desks all unmanned except ,yep you guessed, 1 CBP to check what I estimated to be at least 400 people in the queue. I counted probably 100 in front of me so unless they were to put more staff on (I counted at least 3 walking around chatting but not on desks) average 2-3 mins per person, I was in the queue for the long haul (pun intended!) There were families with small children in the queue some as young as 2 whose parents seemed to be at their wits end trying to keep them within the confines of the queuing system ......come on SFO airport sort it out so those with very small children and the elderly be given priority it is not on! Anyway after 2 hours in the queue and approx 40 people in front of me somebody took the initiative to open up a few more desks and some 30 mins later I received my stamp and was in the baggage hall. At least I won’t have to wait for my bag to arrive I thought - wrong it had arrived but then they had put the Air France flight on the same carousel mixing everybody’s bags up. As we had all been in immigration so long the bags had been removed from the belts and dotted around the baggage hall. Top tip if you can’t find your suitcase and are told that it has arrived ask to see if any bags had been taken downstairs to make space! As after about 50 minutes that was where I had to gamble on going (have to clear customs to go downstairs with no way back if it is not there) to visually identify it - to summarise disembark the airplane 1700 arrive immigration 1710 walk out of the airport at 2030 makes SFO officially the most disorganised airport I have ever had the displeasure to arrive sprinkle it with unmotivated rude staff really gives such a poor first impression of what is a fantastic city / country which is a shame! Next time I visit it will be OAK or SJC no way will I ever go through SFO again!

✅ Trip Verified | We arrived on a full international flight from AKL and landed in SFO to transfer to ORD. It took 2 hours to get through to the domestic terminal. The security staff was indifferent and inefficient. The TSA PRE line was empty and fully staffed. The employees in that area were yawning and indifferent while there was a line of about 200 people going through the only other line. In addition, there were at least 5 other security employees standing idle. However, they chose to have only one person checking passports and only one person managing the security line who was extremely slow. It was the worst security I have ever experienced from both a domestic and international perspective. Unless I am coming to San Francisco the stay, I will try to avoid this airport in the future.

✅ Trip Verified | Barely caught connection: signage, directions and complete lack of helpers, greeters or assistants makes navigation very challenging. Multiple possible trains to change terminals and little guidance on the quickest one. Must go through security again when transferring terminals: real downside. Also our first flight waited 25 minutes for a gate to park. Cut our time way down. I would avoid SFO Airport for connecting flights. They should work harder on user friendliness. (Snarky TSA guy was no help.)

✅ Trip Verified | I fly weekly for business, and my client for the past year has been in the San Francisco Bay area - so I've flown into and out of all three Bay Area airports, Oakland, San Jose, and San Francisco. Overall, I would say that SFO has great shopping and dining, is wonderfully decorated, is convenient to drive into and out of - and totally blows at making airplanes land and take off on time. In the past year, I have had a higher percentage of my flights into and out of SFO delayed than at any other airport. When I check FlightAware, in general the other two Bay Area airports will be on-time, while SFO will be delayed. I have been delayed due to fog, winds, air traffic, runway construction and smoke. The most heinous delay was when airport operations decided to "flip the airport" - switch which direction traffic would land and take off - which made every airplane on the ground, even ones lined up to take off, have to then taxi around to a different runway. This happened after they closed the boarding door on my flight and put us twenty-sixth in line for take-off and delayed us for over an hour. This was one of the only two times I've ever actually missed a connecting flight. Other than SFO's near-incompetence with their core function, the airport is largely okay. I fly American from Terminal 2, but I go through security at the Delta terminal, Terminal 1, because there are currently only 8 gates in operation there, and I can go through PreCheck in less than 5 minutes, then walk over to T2 inside security. The tram that runs to the rental car facility is rather slow, but does the job fairly stress-free. And, it's fun to look at the jumbo and super-jumbo jets (Airbus 380, that is) that fly internationally. But in general, I try to avoid SFO, especially for departures if I have to make a connection.

✅ Trip Verified | On 12/19/17, at Gate 66 United. The 140+ Decibel Alarm Rang For Over 30 Minutes at 8.00 am, finally silencing around 8.30 am after the third call by airport personnel. No excuse for forcing passengers to be subjected to dangerous sound levels while staff were nowhere to be located. A complete failure to follow public health sound regulations and codes. A ridiculous amount of damage to the hearing for many. Felt like I was in a greyhound station without an adult attendant. Elderly passengers cringing with hands over ears. A major incident where no-one seems to care.

❎ Not Verified | SFO is my home airport. I've flown domestically a couple of times out of it, but with the lack of service on domestic airlines, I really don't like flying on US carriers. Thus, my review is a compilation of experiences on both departures and arrivals at SFO over the last six years. My wife and I travel two to three times a year, mostly to Asia to visit her relatives. Most of the TPAC flights we've taken out of SFO have been late night and the security line experience has been quite quick. SFO doesn't use TSA agents. They were allowed to hire contract employees instead and the difference shows, at least in the international security lines. I believe the longest I've taken in a security line is about 15 minutes, and that was for a rare day flight. So departures are typically pretty good. Arrivals have been a different story. We got into the Global Entry system pretty early in the game, back before credit card offers to reimburse the $100 fee were common. We did it after one particularly heinous arrival in which two 380's and a couple of 777's all landed within minutes of each other, coupled with a computer glitch, caused the lines to simply be ridiculous. If you're familiar with the arrivals layout, you know there's a gate way the heck down at the far end of the arrivals hall. That's where the back of the line was. I believe it was 2.5 hours to get through immigration after all was said and done. But even before that, lines were typically about an hour long, even when fewer than the maximum number of flights land simultaneously. Global Entry changed that for us. The last flight we took arrived back in SFO on December 5th at 6.16pm, according to FlightAware. We were in my brother-in-law's car at 6.45 with our baggage. Lounges at SFO are pretty spartan. We have the Priority Pass, and the only lounge that's available in the entire airport, domestic or international, is on the OneWorld (AA) side of international departures. None are in domestic departures. And the international departure area is separated to such an extent that if you go to the OneWorld side and your flight is departing on the Star Alliance side, you have to back out from the secure area and then pass security on the other side. Not a well thought out design. We've also used the United Lounge, and those are pretty universally grim. Signage is good. The food and beverage on the airside, while a little steep (what airport isn't), was pretty decent. While it's possible to get to and from the airport on public transit, I wouldn't recommend it. BART is a pretty poorly run system and security is not exactly their forte, so I would imagine someone with suitcases would be seen as easy pickings. My one experience with the super shuttle was a Zero Dark Thirty ride one morning from our house about 10 miles away. For my wife and I, it was about $20. Overall, it's a decent airport. It won't compare with the Changi's, Incheon's or even Bangkok airports of the world, but it's serviceable and, sadly, it represents one of the better airports in the country.

❎ Unverified | Arriving into this airport was ridiculous, queues for over an hour, staff totally disrespectful and rude not only to myself but other passengers. Organised chaos, no one had a clue of what they were supposed to be doing and when they did some one else would contradict them! The young lady, I use the word lady very loosely and for the sake of this review, who pulled me to question why I didn't have my papers (another member of staff took my papers before I arrived to a member of staff who was supposed to take the papers) spoke to me like dirt and made myself and another two passengers (who I wasn't travelling with) feel very uncomfortable, very bad attitude, arrogant and curt!

✅ Verified Review | This has got to be the worst transfer experience I’ve ever had. I only had a 1hr 45min layover. Make sure you have 2.5 hrs or more. The customs alone took about 45 min. I still had to claim my baggage, recheck them and go through security. I mentioned to security that I was late for my next flight and I was transferring. The guy said they don't expedite passengers (and yet many of the good reviews for their airport says they do?) so that’s a complete lie. He nicely suggested I could ask others if I could cut. Here, sadly, it’s common for people to be asking others to cut at security because they are late for their flights. To be fair, so far no staff were rude, just indifferent. But one young guy near the right side security conveyer belts (right before the scanning machine), when I asked him what should I do, grinned and rudely said "it’s not my problem". I didn’t have time to get his name. I had only 5 minutes to get to gate 90 (yep, the one at the very end) and had to run with all I had. Once I got to my flight 1 min past the boarding time officially ending, the crew was nice enough to still let me on. Seeing me panting, red-faced and sweating, one guy nodded at me and said “you had to run too?”