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The San Francisco Bay Area has three international airports. Oakland International has proven a popular alternative to San Francisco International Airport. Oakland International is popular with low cost airlines and in recent years has been one of the nation's fastest growing airports. A $1.4 billion dollar expansion project currently underway is expected to be completed by 2009.
Oakland International is not directly connected to the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, but AirBART shuttle buses take passengers back and forth between the terminal and the Coliseum/Oakland Airport station. A peoplemover or monorail connection between BART and the terminal is in an advanced planning stage; while the mode of the connection has yet to be determined, it will be fully integrated into the BART fare system. The connection is due to be completed around 2008.
Construction of the airport began in 1927, and the airport was dedicated by Charles Lindbergh that September. In its early days, 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.
Boeing Air Transport (a predecessor of United Airlines) began scheduled flights to Oakland in December 1927. It was joined by Trans World Airlines in 1932.
In 1943, the U.S. Armed Forces took over Oakland Airport and transformed it into an airlift base for military flights to the Pacific islands, ordering all scheduled service to move to San Francisco Municipal Airport. After the war, airlines slowly returned to Oakland: Western AirlinesWestern Airlines was a large airline based in California, with operations throughout the western United States. Western at gate In 1925, the United States Postal Service began to give airlines contracts to carry air mail all around the country. A company began flights in 1946, and was followed by American AirlinesAmerican Airlines AA is the major airline in the United States. It is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, and operates scheduled flights throughout the United States, as well as flights to Latin America, Western Europe, and Japan. Since 1982, AA has been, TWA, and PSAPacific Southwest Airlines PSA was an airline based in San Diego, California, and one of the first large discount airlines in the United States. History The airline started business in 1949 with a leased DC-3 that flew one weekly round trip from San Diego.
During the Vietnam WarThe Vietnam War was a war fought between 1957 and 1975 on the ground in South Vietnam and bordering areas of Cambodia and Laos See Secret War) and in bombing runs ( Rolling Thunder) over North Vietnam. See also the timeline of the Vietnam War. Fighting on, World AirwaysWorld Airways is a non-scheduled airline currently headquartered in Peachtree City, Georgia. Though World Airways was founded in 1948 by Benjamin Pepper, Edward Daly is thought of as World's founder. He bought the airline in 1950 for $50,000 and proceeded shuttled thousands of military passengers through Oakland to their bases in Southeast Asia. After the war, Oakland's traffic slumped, but airline deregulation prompted several low-fare carriers to begin regional flights into the airport.
FedEx opened a cargo base in Oakland in 1988, which is now one of the busiest air freight terminals in the United States. In the 1990's, Southwest Airlines opened a crew base in Oakland, and expanded its flights to become the airport's dominant passenger carrier.