page_title: Oakland International Airport
section_title: Early years
hierarchical_section_title: Oakland International Airport / History / Early years
caption_attribution_description: Aerial view of the Naval Air Station Oakland, California (USA), in the mid-1940s.
context_page_description: Oakland International Airport is in Oakland, California, about 10 miles south of Downtown Oakland and across from San Francisco on the other side of San Francisco Bay. It is owned by the Port of Oakland and has passenger flights to cities in the United States, Mexico, and the Azores with cargo destinations in China and Japan.
  In 2019, 13,378,411 people traveled through OAK, making it the third-largest airport in the San Francisco Bay Area. The airport is an operating base for Southwest Airlines and a focus city for Allegiant Air. As of June 2019, Southwest has 137 daily departures on peak-travel days of the week making it Southwest’s largest operation in California. Alaska Airlines combined with sister-carrier Horizon Air has been the second-busiest carrier at the airport through 2013. In January 2014, Delta overtook Alaska as the airport's No. 2 carrier.
context_section_description: The city of Oakland looked into the construction of an airport starting in 1925. In 1927 the announcement of the Dole prize for a flight from California to Hawaii provided the incentive to purchase 680 acres (275 ha) in April 1927 for the airport. The 7,020-foot-long (2 140 m) runway was the longest in the world at the time, and was built in just 21 days to meet the Dole race start. The airport was dedicated by Charles Lindbergh on September 17. In its early days, because of its long runway enabling safe takeoff rolls for fuel-heavy aircraft, Oakland was the departing point of several historic flights, including Charles Kingsford Smith's historic US-Australia flight in 1928, and Amelia Earhart's final flight in 1937. Earhart departed from this airport when she made her final, ill-fated voyage, intending to return there after circumnavigating the globe.
  Boeing Air Transport (a predecessor of United Airlines) began scheduled flights to Oakland in December 1927. It was joined by Trans World Airlines (TWA) in 1932. In 1929 Boeing opened the Boeing School of Aeronautics on the field, which expanded rapidly in 1939 as part of the Civilian Pilot Training Program. Thousands of pilots and mechanics were trained before the facility was changed into the United Air Lines training center in 1945.
  In 1943 the U.S. Armed Forces temporarily took over Oakland Airport and opened Naval Air Station Oakland. It was transformed into an airlift base for military flights to the Pacific islands, ordering all scheduled service to move to San Francisco International Airport. After the war, airlines slowly returned to Oakland; Western Airlines began flights in 1946, and was followed by American Airlines, TWA, United, Transocean Air Lines and Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA). Oakland became a larger center for non-scheduled and supplemental air carriers, including the four largest companies based and headquartered in Oakland: Transocean Air Lines, World Airways, Trans International Airlines and Saturn Airways. Oakland became one of the largest overhaul and  maintenance operations in the country when Aircraft Engine and Maintenance Company (AEMCO) processed thousands of aircraft. 
  The airport's first Jet Age terminal (now Terminal 1) was designed by John Carl Warnecke & Associates and opened in 1962, part of a $20 million expansion on bay fill that included the 10,000-foot (3048 m) runway 11/29 (now 12/30). The May 1963 OAG showed 15 airline flights arriving in Oakland each day, including nine from San Francisco; in June 1963, TWA flew Oakland's first scheduled jet, a Convair 880, to Chicago. American Airlines scheduled service from Oakland to Phoenix then into Dallas using the Boeing 720 aircraft. Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) provided several flights within California from OAK using Boeing 727 and DC-9 aircraft. United Airlines introduced non-stop service to Chicago, and on the San Francisco-Oakland-Los Angeles route using the Boeing 727.
  During the Vietnam War, World Airways shuttled thousands of military passengers through Oakland to their bases in Southeast Asia, and an international arrivals facility was built, allowing the airport to handle international flights for the first time. World Airways had broken ground on the World Airways Maintenance Center at Oakland International Airport. The maintenance hangar could store four Boeing 747s. It opened in May 1973. During its operation, World Airways contract maintenance services for 14 airlines in the facility. By 1988, World Airways vacant the Oakland maintenance base and moved its headquarters to Washington Dulles. That same year, United Airlines assumed the lease on the maintenance base.
  After the war Oakland's traffic slumped, but airline deregulation prompted several low-fare carriers to begin flights. This increase prompted the airport to build a $16.3 million second terminal, the Lionel J. Wilson Terminal 2, with seven gates for PSA and AirCal service. In the mid-1980s, People Express Airlines provided scheduled Boeing 747 transcontinental flights from OAK to Newark. SFO Helicopter Airli
caption: Aerial view of NAS Oakland in the mid-1940s
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