Renovation work continues at San Francisco International Airport, even during the stay at home order.
The renovation of Harvey Milk Terminal 1 at SFO began in 2016, and the project has been determined to be essential construction that can continue during the stay at home order. So there are some changes happening in the terminal this week, even though few passengers are passing through the airport for now.
"There's a new front of the terminal area with the new large-scale signage that you see out front. There is a new ticket counter area, and what we're seeing is airlines moving into that space," says airport spokesman Doug Yakel.
Those airlines are Jet Blue and Southwest, both of which are moving to new ticket counters and baggage areas. The airlines were supposed to move in at the end of March, but that phase of the project was pushed back because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
American Airlines will be next to move from terminal two into terminal one, likely in May.
While the pandemic slowed down the project initially, the reduced traffic through the airport is now allowing crews to catch up quickly as half of the international terminal has been closed.
"This is allowing us to do a host of things that normally would be very incremental: replacing carpeting, replacing moving equipment, servicing things even out on our roadways, doing repaving," says Yakel.
The next phase of the project will be renovating the older ticket counters in Terminal One.
