Airport Death Match: Is SFO or OAK Faster to San Francisco?

As I mentioned in my trip report last week, I flew into SFO on a recent trip to the Bay Area but back out of Oakland. This wasn’t by design, but since I knew they were both pretty easy options from the city, I felt comfortable choosing the best flight times/prices out of either airport. Once we settled on going into one and out of the other, I knew it would be worth a comparison post. Let’s get it on.

[Disclosure: OAK may be a sponsor of the Cranky Weekly Review, but it had nothing to do with this trip and didn’t even know about it.]

This has been a hot topic in the news lately. After all, when Oakland decided to rename itself San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport to reflect its location, SFO blew its top. Lawsuits were flying, and… well it all just seemed so dumb. But none of that matters. Which is more convenient?

In one corner we have the heavyweight champion, San Francisco International Airport. Weighing in at about 500 daily flights, home to the mighty United Airlines hub, and collector of fog, SFO sits a mere 7ish miles south of the southern border of the city of San Francisco itself.

In the other corner, we have the little airport with a big name, welterweight champion San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport. Weighing in at about 140 flights a day, home to Southwest’s fleet of LUVjets, and gateway to the not-so-great Hegenberger Road stretch of Oakland, OAK sits about 7ish miles east of San Francisco, as long as you don’t mind a little swim in the Bay.

Of course, straight-line distance is totally irrelevant, so I thought I’d put together this real-life test. I decided the best plan would be to compare times between airport security and the Embarcadero station in San Francisco. That’s where we would be getting on and off BART to make our way up to Fisherman’s Wharf.

I had hoped to include transit all the way to the hotel in the calculation, but since it was SF Pride, transit was all messed up within the city. That didn’t seem like an accurate measure. So, let’s see how each side did.

At SFO, we walked outside of security at 1:52pm. That’s when the clock officially started.

We made our way up the stairs to the AirTrain which was ready and waiting for us. We were on the train at 1:55pm.

After passing Terminal 3 and the International Terminal, we hopped off the AirTrain and went into the BART station. We had already loaded our Clipper cards on our phones so there was no delay in purchasing tickets anywhere along the route. There was a yellow train waiting, but it didn’t leave for several minutes. We were moving at 2:08pm.

Thirty one minutes later, we pulled into the Embarcadero station at 2:39pm, popping up above ground to find a perfect day for a nice stroll along the water.

Total time from SFO security to Embarcadero was 47 minutes… not too shabby.

On the return, we made it to the Embarcadero station and hopped right on a 9:57am green train.

It’s a quick trip to the Oakland Coliseum stop, where we arrived at 10:16am. This is where we made a fatal mistake.

The BART line to the airport seems well-timed to match with arriving trains, but we dawdled as I took some photos of an empty Coliseum. We walked up to the platform just as it pulled away. That meant we had a 10 minute wait for the next one at 10:28am. We had nothing but time, but it wasn’t great for comparison purposes.

The 10:28am car got us into the airport at 10:37am. We walked right over to security in Terminal 1, arriving at 10:41am.

Total time from Embarcadero to Oakland security was 44 minutes.

We have a winner… and it’s everybody!

We can argue about a minute here or a minute there. For example, should I have just said that it was 10 minutes faster for Oakland because I missed the earlier one? Should I have added more time since I didn’t have to wait when we got to BART and the train was ready? No, absolutely not. The point here is that timing will absolutely vary depending upon when you arrive at any given point along the way. So we need to take this with broader strokes.

A three minute difference here means it’s effectively the same. If you got off at Powell St instead of Embarcadero, that’s a two minute shift. The point is, you can be in the city pretty easily in about the same time from either airport. So when you’re looking at flights, if you’re riding transit, either is a good option and you should always check both.

Not a lot of places can say they have good public transit access to two airports. Good on you, Bay Area.

Airport Death Match: Is SFO or OAK Faster to San Francisco?

Airport Death Match: Is SFO or OAK Faster to San Francisco?

Airport Death Match: Is SFO or OAK Faster to San Francisco?

Airport Death Match: Is SFO or OAK Faster to San Francisco?

Airport Death Match: Is SFO or OAK Faster to San Francisco?