The FAA Just Gave SFO Six Extra Landing Slots an Hour — Here's the Fine Print Behind the Fix
The Federal Aviation Administration has begun letting San Francisco International Airport (SFO) land more aircraft per hour, permitting a new staggered-approach procedure on its closely spaced parallel runways that raised the airport's arrival rate to 40 aircraft an hour on August 12, 2026, with a further increase to 42 an hour planned by the end of the month.
The move partially unwinds a restriction the FAA imposed at the end of March 2026, when it cut SFO's maximum arrival rate from 54 aircraft an hour to 36 and permanently banned the airport's long-standing practice of "side-by-side" simultaneous landings on its two close-set parallel runways, even in clear weather. That ban, and the capacity cut that came with it, triggered months of compounding delays for United Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Delta Air Lines and other carriers operating into one of the country's busiest West Coast hubs.
What changed on August 12
Under the new staggered-approach rule, aircraft can still use both of SFO's parallel runways at once, but they can no longer touch down side by side. Instead, one aircraft approaches the first runway while a second aircraft is permitted to approach the parallel runway behind it — offset diagonally rather than flying wingtip-to-wingtip on final approach. Because the two aircraft are staggered rather than paired, their approach paths are allowed to overlap in time without the aircraft ever being abreast of one another.
The FAA says the staggered procedure keeps intact the added separation standards it introduced in March while still letting controllers use both runways simultaneously, rather than funneling all arrivals onto a single runway during instrument conditions. The agency has said the arrival rate will revert to the more conservative 36-an-hour cap whenever visibility drops and instrument approaches are required, since the staggered procedure depends on visual separation between the two converging flights.
Why the FAA banned side-by-side landings in the first place
The restriction traces back to a broader nationwide safety review the FAA launched after the January 2025 midair collision between an Army Black Hawk helicopter and American Airlines Flight 5342 near Washington's Reagan National Airport, which killed 67 people. That review prompted the agency to re-examine separation standards at airports across the country where runways sit close enough together that controllers had historically relied on visual separation to run simultaneous approaches.
SFO's two primary runways, 28L and 28R, sit roughly 750 feet apart — a spacing the FAA had used for decades to run side-by-side visual approaches in good weather, a practice that became something of a signature maneuver for plane-spotters at the airport. After its review, the FAA concluded that spacing no longer met the separation thresholds it now wants applied nationwide, and in late March 2026 it banned the side-by-side procedure outright, dropping the airport's ceiling from 54 arrivals an hour to 36.
Five months of knock-on delays
The 33% cut in arrival capacity landed just as SFO also began a runway resurfacing project on March 30, 2026, compounding the disruption. With demand for slots essentially unchanged and roughly a third fewer arrival slots to work with, the airport absorbed months of delays through the spring and summer: single-day disruptions included 337 delays and 5 cancellations on June 5, 2026, and a further 213 delays with 3 cancellations on June 25, 2026, according to flight-tracking data cited by aviation outlets covering the airport. Average arrival delays at SFO were reported to have roughly quadrupled compared with the same period in 2025.
United Airlines, which operates its largest West Coast hub at SFO, carried the heaviest exposure to the restriction, with Alaska Airlines and other carriers absorbing knock-on aircraft-routing effects. Because the cap left airlines with little buffer to recover from routine weather or air traffic disruptions, otherwise minor delays cascaded through the day's schedule more easily than before the ban.
What the fix does and doesn't solve
The staggered-approach procedure restores roughly three-quarters of the lost capacity — 42 arrivals an hour compares with the pre-ban 54 — without reinstating the side-by-side procedure the FAA has now permanently retired. It does not address the separate runway construction project, which airport officials have said will continue to constrain about 30% of arrivals with delays of 30 minutes or more until the resurfacing work is expected to wrap up in early October 2026.
The new procedure is also weather-dependent. Because it relies on the same kind of visual separation between aircraft that underpinned the old side-by-side landings, SFO will fall back to the lower 36-an-hour cap whenever fog, low clouds or other conditions force air traffic control to switch to instrument approaches — a routine occurrence at the fog-prone airport, particularly in the mornings.
Sources
- FAA Bumps Up Allowed Arrival Count At San Francisco International Airport — FlightAware
- FAA approves staggered arrival procedures for SFO, slightly boosting landing capacity — Piedmont Exedra
- San Francisco International Airport Allowed to Increase Flight Arrivals After FAA Parallel Landing Ban — Paddle Your Own Kanoo
- FAA Announces New Landing Procedure to Speed Up Arrivals at SFO — SFist
- End Of An Era: Why The FAA Just Banned SFO's Iconic Parallel Landings — Simple Flying
- SFO Runway Construction Delays About 30 Percent of Arrivals Through October — DeepArrival
- SFO delay update: FAA cuts arrivals under new rules — AirHelp