Bay Area fliers see more routes, new options

Regional airports steadily increase nonstop flights, view passenger growth

Bay Area airports are adding more nonstop flights, potentially fueling the growing passenger traffic they have seen in recent years.

At Oakland International Airport, American Airlines has launched a nonstop daily route to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport.

Oakland airport officials called the new service “significant,” considering it will provide Oakland passengers with a number of destinations that are not currently possible with a single connection from the airport. American Airlines has more than 760 daily flights from Dallas Fort Worth that connect to more than 200 destinations in 31 countries.

The new daily service leaves from Dallas at 9:10 a.m. and arrives in Oakland at 10:37 a.m., while the flight from Oakland leaves at 11:30 a.m. and arrives in Dallas at 5:20 p.m. A second nighttime flight will operate during the busy summer travel season.

Other Bay Area airports have added new flights as well. Mineta San Jose International Airport last month added its first-ever international service to Cabo San Lucas/Los Cabos. The weekly Southwest flight departs every Saturday at 8:45 a.m. and returns to San Jose at 2:05 p.m.

San Francisco International Airport last month welcomed Interjet, a Mexico City-based airline, which now operates three flights a week each to Cancun and Guadalajara from San Francisco.

They are the latest additions in what has been a steady increase in nonstop flights and passenger growth across Bay Area airports.

Mineta San Jose saw a 15 percent increase in passengers in 2017, which could grow with at least eight new flights slated to launch this year. At Oakland, more than 13 million passengers flew to or from Oakland in 2017, up 8.3 percent from 2016. That marked the busiest year for passenger traffic since 2007, when the airport saw a record 14.6 million passengers. And in the last five years annual passenger traffic has jumped 25 percent to 55.8 million at San Francisco International Airport.