SFO runway closure ahead

San Francisco International Airport just took one of its four runways out of service until October 2, 2026, and that alone would have tightened the schedule for spring and summer flying. The closed strip is Runway 1 Right, which shut on March 30 for repaving, taxiway work, new lighting, and fresh markings. (flysfo.com) The part travelers will actually feel is that San Francisco International Airport is not just losing one runway. Its parallel neighbor, Runway 1 Left, is being turned into a taxiway during construction, so all takeoffs and landings are being funneled onto the two east-west runways instead. (flysfo.com) Under the airport’s original plan, officials said fewer than 10 percent of flights would be delayed, with average delays under 30 minutes and the worst pressure around 9:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. That was the optimistic version, before federal rules changed at the same time. (flysfo.com) On March 31, the Federal Aviation Administration added a second constraint by banning side-by-side visual approaches to San Francisco’s parallel east-west runways in clear weather. Instead of two planes coming in together, one now has to fly offset behind the other in a staggered approach. (faa.gov) That matters at San Francisco because the airport has long depended on closely spaced parallel runways to keep traffic moving when the weather is good. Once those side-by-side arrivals were removed, the airport’s arrival rate fell from 54 planes an hour to 36. (abcnews.com) So the six-month construction project and the new landing rule are stacking on top of each other. Airport officials now expect about one quarter of arriving flights to be delayed by at least 30 minutes during this period. (usatoday.com) The timing is rough because the closure runs straight through the busiest travel months, from late March into early October 2026. San Francisco handled almost 55 million passengers and more than 400,000 aircraft movements last year, so even small cuts in hourly capacity can ripple through a very large schedule. (simpleflying.com) There is also a neighborhood effect on the ground. Because all departures are using Runways 28 Left and 28 Right, the airport says some communities will see a temporary increase in departing aircraft overhead while the work is underway. (flysfo.com) The project itself is not small maintenance. San Francisco awarded Granite Construction the contract in May 2025, and the airport says the total cost is about $180 million, with $92.1 million coming from the Federal Aviation Administration. (flysfo.com) Even when Runway 1 Right reopens on October 2, the landing rule is not automatically going away. The Federal Aviation Administration has said the side-by-side approach ban is a safety measure and that it is still exploring ways to raise arrival rates safely, which means some of San Francisco’s capacity squeeze could outlast the construction itself. (faa.gov)