What's in a name? At the end of March, officials for the Bay Area city of Oakland announced that they want to add the name "San Francisco Bay" into the name of the smaller airport that is also a 20-minute drive from downtown San Francisco but that many people from outside the area do not consider as one they can choose when needing to get to the city.
"Adding 'San Francisco Bay' to the name will improve travelers' geographic awareness of the airport and help us reach and succeed in new markets," Oakland Board of Commissioners Chair Barbara Leslie said of the plans.
Related: A smaller airport wants to change its name to get more people to fly there
While putting "San Francisco" in the name will obviously go a long way in helping promote Metropolitan Oakland International Airport (OAK), not everyone is happy by the prospect — the head of the main San Francisco International Airport (SFO) said that it could cause "customer confusion" and take away from SFO's "status as a major international gateway."
Main airport 'concerned about the potential for customer confusion'
"We are deeply concerned about the potential for customer confusion and disservice that could result from this proposed renaming," San Francisco International Airport Director Ivar C. Satero said in a statement. "SFO has operated since 1927 and has used the name 'San Francisco Airport' or 'San Francisco International Airport' for most of its history, making it immediately recognizable to customers."
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SFO further said that it requests OAK to "not proceed with any name change that would incorporate the use of 'San Francisco' as this would only result in confusion and inconvenience to the traveling public we all serve."
The airports are situated on opposite sides of the Bay and are each about a 30-minute mile drive from downtown San Francisco. While significantly smaller and used primarily by low-cost carriers, OAK has also been around since 1927 and has numerous routes going both across the U.S. and to some international destinations in Mexico and the Caribbean.
Here is why a name change for Oakland Airport is needed (and why SFO is so against it)
In recent years, local officials have been making a big push to get more airlines to add routes to OAK as a way to bring more economic activity and tourism to a city that was once known for crime and economic depression.
"Oakland helped put us on the map in California and we're wholeheartedly supportive of this rebranding that acknowledges OAK's economic position and influence in the San Francisco Bay area while staying true to its Oakland roots," Southwest Airlines (LUV) Marketing VP Jennifer Birdie said in a statement.
But according to Oakland's Leslie, the name change is also badly needed because more than one-third of American travelers and even more international ones do not associate the name Oakland with proximity to San Francisco.
While SFO officials are hammering in the idea that a name change would cause public "misunderstanding of its physical location or its perceived relationship to SFO," it is not particularly uncommon for a large city to have two airports with its name — in Chicago, there is the main O'Hare International Airport (ORD) and the Chicago Midway Airport (MDW) much closer to the city's center.
