Which airport?

[flowergirl45]

I’m wondering if San Francisco airport or Oakland would be better to fly into/out of. We are flying from Virginia on a Saturday in June, staying at the Lodge at the Presideo. Will rent a car at the airport and then drive to the hotel. Stay for a couple of nights, then drive north to see several redwood sites. Any thoughts?

 

[Ann-CA]

I’m wondering if San Francisco airport or Oakland would be better to fly into/out of. We are flying from Virginia on a Saturday in June, staying at the Lodge at the Presideo. Will rent a car at the airport and then drive to the hotel. Stay for a couple of nights, then drive north to see several redwood sites. Any thoughts?

I’d say it’s a wash and would choose the flight with better value or time of arrival. If you can avoid traffic hour, that’d be ideal. If you do OAK you’d have to account for paying for bay bridge (i don’t rememeber which way where you’d avoid that with SFO. But going north you’ll end up on Golden Gate anyways.

 

[MsChristy12]

Agreed with poster above. Besides airfare and flight schedules, don't forget to compare rental car rates for both airports before you decide. Logically, the larger airport should be cheaper but that's not always true, OAK can have better rates and that might help you decide which airport to go with.

 

[Rex1993]

Coming from someone who almost always chooses OAK, I would recommend SFO. You have much more likelihood to hit traffic coming from Oakland going to where you want to go.

If you do choose Oakland and rent a car, think about buying the gas option or be careful where you refill. The gas stations on Hegenberger are notorious for having tourists being held up while pumping gas. Actually saw one in progress while driving to the airport back in September.

 

[PiratesOfTheSea]

SFO>SJC>OAK

If you are going to the Presidio I’d even fly into SJC before OAK right now. From OAK You’d have to pay the bridge toll to go into SF, and the Bay Bridge gets shut down regularly by people who never got enough attention from their parents growing up. Then you’d have to drive across the city through city streets including some of the sketchy parts. Then if you have to return the car to OAK and have to fill up near the airport, there are professional smash and grab crews waiting at the gas station to break into your car while you are literally sitting in your car.

You can avoid all that fun by flying into SFO or SJC.

 

[Sykes]

Going to the Presidio, you'll save a fair bit of time going to SFO (about 15 minutes saved without traffic, but more with traffic). Having said that, I'd prioritize the airport with the best flight schedules, fares, and rental car prices before I worry too much about airport amenities and distance. One thing to note is that SFO tends to get arrival delays during cloudy days, which are common in June. You'll be a fair bit less likely to encounter flight delays going into OAK (or SJC) than you will going into SFO.

 

[flowergirl45]

Thank you all for the thorough replies. Much appreciated! Things I never considered, for sure. Smash and grabbers, rental car rates, SJC….things for me to think about!

 

[bcla]

I always prefer Oakland because it's less maddening and easier to deal with. I remember seeing something claiming that the average time to get to downtown San Francisco was less from OAK than from SFO, which is actually about 10 miles south of San Francisco. However, that might have been at a time when bridge toll was 75 cents.

The biggest issue with SFO is their closely spaced parallel runways, where they have to operate them in pairs for landings. SFO is impacted for flights, so they need parallel landings in order to keep everything on schedule. When there's fog, that just causes SFO to come to a crawl, where they have to use one runway for landings. OAK or SJC pretty much only operate on a single runway, or something close to it (SJC has two closely spaced runways), but they don't have anywhere near as many flights as SFO and fog doesn't really impact their ability to land on schedule since they only need that one runway. SFO serves maybe 70 million passengers a year while OAK and SJC serve less than 15 million.

OAK is typically cheaper for rental cars too.

For those who know SFO, yeah they have four runways, but they cross each other and there's no safe way to use them simultaneously as landing pairs in thick fog.