The Pledge of Allegiance was led by Mike Horwitz.

 

The Invocation was given by Jeff Krolik, his first for the club! The gist of the invocation is that Rotarians do the right things every day, but it takes time for it to show and if we believe otherwise, it’s despicable. Wait… what??? Well, it started with a story about David Niven and Winston Churchill, who gave Niven a Medal of Heroism and said it would have been despicable if Niven hadn’t renounced his US citizenship back to English citizenship during WWII and then Jeff segued to the San Antonio Spurs Champion ring having a miner with his pick hitting a rock on it. The Spur’s belief is it takes 10,000 attempts before the rock finally splits at the 10,001+ try. Kudos to Jeff for taking us trans-continental, learning about the Niven/Churchill exchange, the meaning of the Spurs’ championship ring motto, and how it all tries back to Rotary. That is very much not despicable.

 

President Cary passed a sympathy card around for Bonnie Bertetta, who lost her son, Fred Bertetta III. Fred’s funeral mass will be held on Friday, August 25^th at 1:00pm, at Our Lady of Angels Church.

 

Grace Redmond, guest of Emily Matthews, came for her 2^nd meeting. Grace is an Author and a Business and Life Success Coach.

Leah Hatem was introduced by Doug Person. Leah has Rotary roots - she was a member of her North Carolina high school’s Interact Club - and is now in Human Resources at Microsoft. 

 

 

President Cary noted the tragic fires in Maui, Hawaii and said our District Governor, Laine Hendricks, has set up a site to help with donations. Visit

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=6C4K2SDUY8FUG or see Chris Ramirez’s email for details.

 

Christine Krolik announced that we have a field trip on September 27^th. Our meeting that day will be held at the Carolands Chateau in Hillsborough with an opportunity to participate in a site tour at 11:30am before our meeting. Stay tuned for more detail and update your calendars now.

 

Jerry Winges provided an International Service Committee update. Our club is sponsoring a new international project and is presenting it to other district Rotary clubs to source District Dedicated Funds (DDF). The new project is headed by Bobba Venkatadri and is an extension of our last one – creating a tribal school for 640 girls in India, located ~30 miles from our prior project. The project is supported by the local Indian Rotary club, and they have already committed $10,000 in DDF. We need to raise another $32,000 to have the Rotary Foundation match 80%.

 

Chris Ramirez reminded us about “Burlingame on the Avenue” this coming weekend, August 19th and 20th. This is a Chamber of Commerce sponsored event and Rotarians will be selling beer and wine, with all tips going directly to our Club for scholarships.

 

President Cary reminded us that the annual golf tournament will be on Monday, August 28th. There are plenty of golfers signed up, but we can never have too many volunteers or sponsors, so please sign up. Marilyn Orr asked people who already spoke with her about signing up to check in with her. Also, more wine donations (>$50/bottle) are needed.

 

Speaking of golf, Cary fined Phil Siegel $10 for his President’s Club while playing golf the day before for making a glorious shot and a birdie. Cary, now in full “fine mode”, spared Jennifer Pence from paying a fine, but Marc Friedman had to pick it up because he was sitting next to Jennifer. The way to avoid fines? Join The President’s Club!

 

Lastly, today’s “Newscast” worthy item was shared by President Cary - a picture of the Zoom HQ building while ruminating as to why Zoom even had an office. Good question.

 

Al Royce introduced Doug Yakel, San Francisco Airport’s Public Information Officer for the past 10+ years and who has a 30-year background in aviation. Al served with Doug on the SFO Roundtable and knows Doug personally, including a big weakness – he’s a die-hard Green Bay Packers fan. Now we all know! Doug updated us on SFO’s post-pandemic recovery, outlined upcoming projects and summarized what the future holds for SFO.

 

Doug gave a brief overview of SFO: 1) it is the largest Bay Area airport (66% of all flights go through SFO), 2) it has 40,000 on-site jobs, making it one of the largest job centers in SM County, and 3) it is an enterprise department of the city and county of San Francisco, meaning it is self-sustaining whereby its revenue covers all its operations.

 

SFO has had a very good run recently. First, it is ranked as the #1 larger US airport by the Wall Street Journal, second it is ranked as one of the top 10 airports worldwide by international travelers for their overall customer experience. Additionally, SFO is a leader in sustainability, with many terminals certified for sustainable design and for leading the world in the use of biofuel, which emits less than 30% of greenhouse gases compared to jet fuel.

 

SFO has been through quite a journey over the past years, mostly due to the pandemic. Pre-pandemic, SFO had 57 million passengers in 2019, but when Covid hit in April 2020 the passenger count dropped to 138,000, a 97% drop compared to April 2019. 2023 is tracking closer to 90% of pre-pandemic levels, but international travel still lags and a full recovery is not expected before 2025.

 

The uptick in travel has resulted in several new airline and destination activities, specifically Zip Air flying to Tokyo, Ito and United to Rome, Norse Atlantic to London Gatwick and Star Lux to Taiwan.

 

The recovery is also enabling SFO to get back to the facility projects were $4B in capital improvements was suspended during the pandemic. Terminal 1 enters its final phase with the ticket counter area buildout to be complete by Spring 2024 and Terminal 3 west renovation is starting (east renovation is already complete). The Shoreline Protection Program continues to be built out because SFO has 8 miles of water line exposed to sea level rise, so walls are being built. Future projects include building additional concourses away from passenger areas. One thing that will not happen at SFO is to build additional runways.

 

Doug then opened the meeting for Q & A. Christine Krolik asked the first question, specifically the status of the FAA’s NextGen Technology. Doug explained that the FAA’s intent was to modernize airspace and to improve efficiencies and predictability, but that the actual impact to date is that NextGen benefits have not kept pace with the initial project goals.

 

Jennifer Pence asked the best way to find rates and information for these new discount carriers. Doug suggested using the Fly SFO website where one types in a destination and SFO providers the airlines that currently fly to that destination.

 

Bobba Venkatadri wonders why the baggage delivery system is so fast. It is driven by many factors that include the physical layout of the airport (can shorten time of delivery) and the workload demand at any given point in time (multiple large airlines arriving around the same time).

 

Doug then talked about lost and stolen bags. An interesting finding is the longer an airline has your bag, the larger the likelihood that it may get lost, so checking in too early before a flight isn’t a good idea. Stolen bags usually get taken from the claim area by thieves who simply wait for the last bags. Apple tags are a great idea.

 

Al Royce questioned what was learned from the 2013 Asiana crash at SFO. What was learned is that many flight crews have an over reliance on autopilot, especially foreign crews. This over reliance on technology resulted in Boeing changing its software to show what is on autopilot and what is not on autopilot in the cockpit.

 

Mark Johnson wanted to know what causes instances of near misses at airports. The primary reasons are crew fatigue and confusion of the runway layouts. Doug said the practice is called go-arounds and that they happen ~3-4 times per day and are a good thing because retrying and being sure is always best.

 

Bobba asked if being in a highly regulated industry was at odds with tapping into the technology and innovation culture of nearby Silicon Valley. Doug responded that the safety record shows regulations work and there is opportunity for innovation within those regulations. He explained how SFO was the first airport to face the Lyft and Uber issues and how it licenses its software technology to other airports.  The next wave of technology that will eventually need to be integrated into SFO’s infrastructure are autonomous vehicles and urban air mobility/air taxis.

 

Cary Koh asked which airports around the world we should seek, and which ones should we avoid. Per Sky Tracks (based on passenger surveys), the top three airports worldwide are Singapore, Seoul, and Doja. Doug declined to answer which airports worldwide are the least respected.

 

During the Q&A session we also learned that SFO’s maximum capacity is 71 million passengers and 1,500 flights, and that today 30% of all flights fly to Southern California. The need for high-speed rail and/or light rail will be critical in the future as we near the maximum limits.

 

Jerry Winges asked how big an aircraft can get in the future, citing the double decker capacity of the A380, which seems back in vogue lately. Doug believes pilot shortages is the reason for the A380’s resurgence, but ultimately most airports have incompatible infrastructure, including runway length.

 

Pete Wanger asked the last question, which went back to the go-around procedure and wanted to know how many are caused by on-ground situations versus the pilot making the call to do so. Doug said on-ground situations necessitating a go-around was rare, and estimated it’s < 10%.