Residents under SFO's flight path can expect more planes overhead after the Federal Aviation Administration approved a new "staggered parallel arrivals" procedure on Wednesday, Aug. 12, immediately boosting the airport's hourly landing capacity from 36 to 40 flights.
The change partially lifts a ban on parallel approaches that had been in place since late March, according to KRON4. SFO expects arrivals to reach 42 per hour by the end of August. Before the March restrictions, the airport handled 54 arrivals per hour in clear weather.
Those extra flights will use the same two closely spaced runways, 28L and 28R, that funnel aircraft directly over Burlingame and Hillsborough neighborhoods.
The runways sit just 750 feet apart.
What changed and why
On March 30, the FAA banned side-by-side parallel landings at SFO, citing safety concerns about the tight runway spacing and congested airspace. The same day, SFO closed Runway 1R for a $180 million repaving project. Together, the two changes slashed arrival capacity by a third.
The result was months of cascading delays. Average wait times quadrupled from about five minutes to more than 20. Forty-one percent of flights were delayed at least 15 minutes between April and early August, compared with 18% during the same stretch in 2025.
SFO spokesperson Doug Yakel said the original forecast was that runway construction alone would delay about 15% of flights, but the parallel-landing ban pushed that figure past 35%.
"While this will not fully restore the arrival rate we had when true side-by-side landings were permitted, this is nonetheless a step in the right direction," Yakel told Bay City News, as reported by SFist.
How it works
Instead of landing two planes simultaneously on the parallel runways, the new procedure staggers them so one aircraft stays ahead of the other. The approach is only permitted during clear weather, according to ABC7. When visibility drops, SFO reverts to the more restricted single-runway pattern that limits arrivals to 36 per hour.
What residents can do
The Town of Hillsborough maintains a dedicated SFO airplane noise page with a link for residents to file complaints directly with SFO's noise abatement office. The SFO Airport/Community Roundtable, which includes representatives from local cities and the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, was formed to address community noise concerns from aircraft operations.
Full runway capacity is not expected to return until Runway 1R reopens around Oct. 2, completing a two-stage recovery that began with the Aug. 12 procedural change.
