v2024.09.04

About

This release contains projected annual operations at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) by aircraft type for future years 2024-2050.

Data Sources

Aircraft Activity

FAA Air Traffic Activity Data System
FAA Terminal Area Forecast 2023

Employment

BLS Employment for Oakland-Hayward-Berkeley MSA
BLS Employment for San Francisco-Redwood City-South San Francisco MSA
BLS Employment for San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara MSA

Population

Federal Reserve Bank Population for San Francisco City/County

COVID-19

City of SF COVID-19 Hospitalizations
City of SF COVID-19 Vaccinations

Plan Bay Area 2050 Projections

Plan Bay Area 2050 Data
PBA2050-forecast-profiles repo

SFO Airport Development Plan

Executive Summary
Chapter 2: Aviation Activity Forecasts
Appendix C: Airport Development Plan Forecast Factors

Methodology and Assumptions

• SFO annual commercial aircraft operations are assumed to follow a regression model similar to the one used in the SFO Airport Development Plan, where operations are projected based on employment and a dummy variable accounting for a decrease in operations following 9/11.
• The regression model in this release includes the following independent variables:
  • employment: total employment summed over three major Bay Area MSAs (San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose)
  • covid_h: number of COVID-19 hospitalizations in San Francisco County
  • non_vax_pop: population in San Francisco County that is not vaccinated against COVID-19, calculated as total population minus vaccinated population
  • dummy_911: dummy variable set to 1 for years 2001, 2002 and 2003, 0 otherwise
  • dummy_covid: dummy variable set to 1 for years 2020 and 2021, 0 otherwise
• The dependent variable is the number of annual commercial aircraft operations at SFO, which is downloaded from FAA's Air Traffic Activity Data System.
• A simple multivariate linear regression model is used with a 72/28 train/test split. The test set was manually chosen to include one year affected by 9/11 (2002) and one year affected by COVID-19 (2022).
• The R2 on the training set was 0.99, on the testing set was 0.97.
  
• There is some overfitting on COVID-19 affected years. However, since these years were exceptional events, this should have little impact on using the regression model to predict operations for future years.
• The independent variables for the regression model were forecasted for 2024-2050 using the following:
  • employment: Plan Bay Area 2050 total employment projection for entire Bay Area. Since historical and future employment draw from two separate datasets, the normalized growth profile from PBA2050 data is applied to the BLS 2023 employment totals to project forward for 2024-2050.
  • covid_h: assumed to decrease by 40% each year until there are zero hospitalizations. Based on trend from 2022-2024 where hospitalizations approximately drop by 40% each year.
  • non_vax_pop: set to zero (i.e. entire SF County population is vaccinated with at least one dose).
  • dummy_911: set to zero
  • dummy_covid: set to zero
• Total aircraft annual operations are assumed to cap at 506,600, according to the SFO Airport Development Plan Executive Summary (table on page 7). Appendix C of the Development Plan lists annual operations constraints by aircraft type that are also incorporated in the projections:
  • Air Taxi: 21,100
  • General Aviation: 12,900
  • Military: 2,400
• If projected annual operations for each aircraft type exceed the above constraints, the annual operation count is set to the cap. Commercial air carrier operation counts are calculated as 506,600 operations minus the number of operations from the remaining three aircraft types.
• Projections by aircraft type are output in the same format as the TAF projections for submission to CARB. Raw and normalized growth profiles for commercial aircraft (Air Carrier and Air Taxi) are output for the Regional Inventory work.

Results

• The projected growth profile for commercial aircraft plateaus in 2035 and remains at its maximum operating capacity (corresponding to 506,600 total operations per year minus General Aviation and Military operations) until 2050.