S.F.-whoa: Airport in Stockton looks to change its name
The people who run the airport in Stockton, a city 83 miles from San Francisco the last time anyone checked, don’t think such a minor detail ought to be held against them.
They have decided that San Francisco is such a nice place they would like to rename their airport the San Francisco Stockton Regional Airport.
“We’re not trying to confuse anyone,” said Stockton Municipal Airport director Harry Mavrogenes. “It’s not about being sneaky. It’s all about marketing. We’re trying to be helpful.”
The problem with Stockton, said the director of its airport, is that no one seems to know where it is.
“When I go to conferences,” Mavrogenes said, “the first thing people want to know is where Stockton is located.”
Stockton, he pointed out, is closer to San Francisco than Chicago Rockford International Airport is to Chicago (85 miles). And it’s just about as far as Orlando Melbourne International Airport is from Orlando (80 miles).
And just down the road from Stockton, he said, is Fresno Yosemite International Airport, which is 96 miles from Yosemite Valley. And then there’s Hollywood Burbank Airport, which isn’t in Hollywood, and Reno-Tahoe International Airport, which isn’t at Lake Tahoe.
And besides, he said, San
Francisco International Airport isn’t located in San Francisco. It’s in San Mateo County, near Millbrae.
Everybody’s doing it, Mavrogenes said, so why not Stockton?
If approved by the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors at its meeting next week, the Stockton Metropolitan Airport will start calling itself the San Francisco Stockton Regional Airport just in time for the Thanksgiving travel season.
There could be problems, however, for travelers arriving at San Francisco Stockton Regional Airport and trying to get to San Francisco.
There’s no public transit serving the San Francisco Stockton Regional Airport, Mavrogenese conceded. The airport does have a bus stop in front of it, but no bus stops there anymore.
“We’re working on that,” Mavrogenes said.
And a dispute with Uber means that there is no Uber service at the airport, either.
“We’re working on that,” Mavrogenes said.
That leaves catching a taxi, or walking. It’s only a 4-mile walk from the Stockton airport to the Stockton Amtrak station. From there, a passenger could reach San Francisco by taking a train to the Richmond BART station and transferring to a BART train to downtown San Francisco.
Doing that by walking would take about six hours, depending on how quickly the passenger covers the initial 4 miles on foot.
At present, one airline serves Stockton — low-cost Allegiant Air — and the only places to fly on Allegiant Air from Stockton are Las Vegas, San Diego and the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport (which is 20 miles from Phoenix and not the main Phoenix airport).
“We’re working on that,” Mavrogenes said.
The airport, he said, would like to offer service to Los Angeles International Airport and to build a customs and immigration hall to attract carriers serving Mexico. But that’s farther down the road than the Amtrak station.
As for passengers trying to reach San Francisco, Mavrogenes said, one option would be someday to offer air service from San Francisco Stockton Regional Airport to San Francisco International Airport. Passengers would, in effect, fly from San Francisco to San Francisco. So far, no airline has expressed an interest in doing any such thing.
In the past, such airlines as United, PSA, Hughes Air West, US Air, Continental and Frontier served Stockton. None still do. Some of them went out of business and don’t serve anyone.
Being small has benefits, the director said. There are so few passengers at the Stockton airport that there is rarely much of a line to pass through the airport’s single security checkpoint and metal detector.
“Only a few minutes,” Mavrogenes said.
Meanwhile, the Stockton Municipal Airport is getting into the spirit of bigger things. Its website features a large globe with big blue lines that converge on Stockton.
At San Francisco International Airport, where 56 airlines serve 53 million passengers a year, officials weren’t sure how to feel about the proposed christening of San Francisco Stockton Regional Airport.
“Wow,” said Joe Walsh, SFO airport’s duty manager, and then he added, “Oy vey.”
Walsh said SFO takes names “very seriously,” and the last thing it wants is to have arriving passengers confused about where they are when their plane lands.
“We’re really careful about how we label our own terminal,” he said. “We get concerned when people end up in Section A of the parking garage, instead of in Garage A. This would be a whole different ballgame.”