If you wanted to fly to the San Francisco area's Oakland airport, which airport code would you use during booking?
If you said SFO, short for San Francisco Oakland, you'd be flying to the wrong place.
That's the code for the main airport in San Francisco, not Oakland.
Last May, over the protests of authorities in San Francisco, the name of the airport for the California city of Oakland (pictured above), located 20 miles southeast of downtown San Francisco, was changed from Metropolitan Oakland International Airport to San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport. Its airport code is OAK.
"This renaming is important to the Port’s broader efforts to strengthen and grow the airport as one of Oakland’s important economic engine," OAK's board announced at the time.
But the addition of "San Francisco" to the name, claims the City Attorney of San Francisco, David Chiu, is sowing confusion and chaos among airline passengers.
In a statement released on Sept. 17, Chiu's office said it had "survey evidence demonstrating levels of confusion over 20 percent" arising from the name change, and he accused Oakland of attempting to infringe on his city's trademark, first used in 1954, that allows exclusive use of "San Francisco" in the airport name for SFO.
"The renaming appeared to be intentionally designed to capitalize on SFO’s trademark and divert travelers who may be unfamiliar with Bay Area geography and lead them to believe OAK has a business relationship or affiliation with SFO, which it does not," said Chiu in the statement.
Two two airports are located on opposite sides of San Francisco Bay and to get between them, incorrect passengers have to travel a distance of some 31 miles around or across the body of water.
Chiu has filed a motion in federal court to force Oakland's airfield to remove "San Francisco" from its name, adding that OAK already possesses its own federally trademarked name, Oakland International Airport, used since 1963.
The Raiders and the Athletics teams have already bailed on Oakland—now even neighbor San Francisco wants to distance itself from associating with the troubled city.
Chiu did not release specific examples of passenger confusion it had collected, but his office's statement did cite one Reddit user who claimed they "picked the wrong airport" and it claimed "a number of travelers have questioned the relationship between the different airports and several have geotagged the wrong airport in social media posts."
Chiu's office has also logged instances of "ride share services directing travelers to the wrong airport," according to Bay Area TV station KRON.
Oakland isn't the only U.S. city that has tinkered with its airport's name in an attempt to poach business from its larger and more popular neighbor.
In Florida, two airports in the small cities of Melbourne and Sanford both added "Orlando" to their names in an effort to compete alongside Orlando's main MCO airport, resulting in reported passenger confusion that was recently covered by Frommer's.
In Florida, booking a flight to the wrong airport can result in large added ride share costs.
In California, though, the consequences of confusion aren't as financially painful, and Oakland does have a claim to being a part of greater San Francisco. Both SFO and OAK are connected to San Francisco by the BART public transit railway, although transit to OAK requires a short shuttle train ride to the main BART station. SFO's BART stop is part of the airport complex, making that airport the easier of the two for transfers to San Francisco.
