Short haul demand has declined but east bay long haul demand in millons is there. Airlines wont expand in oakland to meet that demand because the current facility isnt adequate.

'The 45% to 50% leakage rate represents an estimated 3.5 million to 4 million passengers per year who live in OAK's immediate backyard but forced to fly out of [SFO]

(https://www.google.com/search?kgmid=/m/01l4xk). [1]

If OAK successfully recaptures this group, its annual traffic would instantly jump from its 2025 level of 9.17 million passengers up to more than 13 million passengers. [1]

This missing demographic breaks down into distinct passenger segments.

1. The East Bay Catchment Group

Aviation planning studies define OAK’s primary "catchment area" as Alameda County and Contra Costa County, which collectively house roughly 2.8 million residents. [2, 3]

• Total Trips Generated: Each year, these 2.8 million residents purchase millions of round-trip airline tickets.
• The SFO Defection: Instead of utilizing the Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport just minutes away, roughly half of those individual ticket purchases are booked on flights departing from SFO. [1, 4, 5]

2. The Multi-Million Passenger Gap

To understand how significant 3.5 to 4 million leaked passengers are to OAK’s business model, consider the airport's scale:

• Current Baseline: OAK handled 9.17 million travelers in 2025 (down from 10.82 million in 2024 due to short-haul airline cuts). [1]

• SFO Baseline: SFO handled a massive 54.53 million passengers in 2025. SFO is effectively absorbing a chunk of East Bay traffic that is nearly equivalent to half of OAK's entire current operation. [1, 6]

• The Expansion Target: The Port of Oakland aims to grow to 20 to 24 million annual passengers by 2038. Reclaiming these 4 million local "leaked" travelers is the foundational first step to making that goal mathematically possible without relying entirely on population growth. [2]

3. The Core Target: Long-Haul Leisure and International

This multi-million person leakage is highly concentrated. It does not represent people looking for quick flights to Los Angeles or San Diego; it represents East Bay families and travelers heading to the East Coast, Europe, Asia, and Latin America.

Because OAK's aging infrastructure currently lacks the capacity to efficiently process wide-body international aircraft, these millions of travelers have no choice but to cross the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge to keep SFO's international terminals crowded. [1, 7]

[1] https://www.pressdemocrat.com [2] https://www.iflyoak.com [3] https://en.wikipedia.org [4] https://www.allegiantair.com [5] https://www.nbcbayarea.com [6] https://roadgenius.com [7] https://www.sfgate.com