A Major SFO Runway Is Reopening Early. What Travelers Should Know
A major runway at San Francisco International Airport is expected to reopen several days ahead of schedule, giving travelers some relief after months of elevated flight delays.
Runway 1 Right has been closed since March 30 while crews repaved the runway, rebuilt portions of nearby taxiways, upgraded lighting and replaced pavement markings.
The work had been scheduled to continue through Oct. 2, but now airport officials say it would be completed by Sept. 29.
The reopening will restore some of SFO’s landing capacity at a time when the airport has been operating with a combination of runway construction and Federal Aviation Administration restrictions on parallel landings.
SFO expects the airport to handle about 45 to 48 arriving aircraft per hour after the runway reopens, depending on weather and operating conditions.
Doug Yakel, an SFO spokesperson, said 48 arrivals per hour would essentially return the airport to “normal operations.”
“Although 54 landings per hour was our maximum, we rarely actually reached that number on an hourly basis,” Yakel said.
The FAA in March stopped allowing SFO pilots to make side-by-side visual approaches to the airport’s closely spaced east-west runways, a longstanding practice at SFO.
The change reduced the airport’s clear-weather arrival rate from 54 aircraft per hour to about 36.
In August, the FAA began allowing staggered parallel approaches, in which one aircraft remains ahead of another on the adjacent runway. That change increased SFO’s arrival rate to about 40 aircraft per hour.
SFO’s current operations information says the airport can accommodate about 45 arrivals per hour in fair weather, while low visibility can reduce the rate to about 36 because the runways are only 750 feet apart.
When Runway 1 Right closed, SFO shifted arrivals and departures to Runways 28 Left and 28 Right, while Runway 1 Left was used as a taxiway to reduce congestion around the construction area.
The combined effect contributed to a sharp increase in delays this year.
A Chronicle analysis found that the average flight delay at SFO rose to about 20 minutes between April 1 and June 10, compared with about 5 minutes during the same period in 2025. The share of flights delayed 15 minutes or more also more than doubled.
Recent delays have remained well above the airport’s original projections. About 40% of flights were delayed on average as of August, compared with SFO’s initial estimate that fewer than 15% of flights would be affected by the runway closure.
The project is being built by Granite Construction, which was awarded the contract in May 2025.
The total project cost is about $215 million, including $92.1 million in FAA funding. SFO previously estimated the construction cost at $180 million when it announced the runway closure.
Even after Runway 1 Right reopens, weather will remain a major factor in SFO operations. Fog, low ceilings and other conditions can require the airport to reduce arrival rates.
© 2026 the San Francisco Chronicle. Visit www.sfchronicle.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.