FAA Prohibiting Side-by-side Approaches at KSFO

A new FAA safety measure at San Francisco International Airport (KSFO) prohibits arriving airplanes from flying side-by-side during approaches in VMC to the airport’s parallel east-west runways. General aviation traffic flying into KSFO will face the same delays, which will be instituted by an FAA ground delay program, according to an airport spokesman. “The mechanism to achieve this reduced arrival rate would apply to business/GA flights as well.”

According to KSFO traffic statistics for January, Part 91 general and business aviation accounted for 2.1% of operations—698 out of 32,546 landing and takeoffs. Part 135 air charter operations reached 2,641, or 8.1% of total operations at the airport. Under the new procedures, arrivals will drop from 54 to 36 per hour.

The safety measure came about from a regular quarterly quality-assurance review, according to an FAA spokesman, and has nothing to do with risk assessments following the January 2025 midair collision near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (KDCA).

The FAA warned that the airport also “will experience some flight delays due to a runway repaving project.” This runway project, which isn’t related to the the parallel runway approach prohibition, will cause delays due to plans to close the two north-south runways for a six-month repaving and upgrade project scheduled to end on October 2.