OAKLAND — A settlement was reached in the legal fight over a name previously used by the Oakland airport that will bar the East Bay aviation hub from using a moniker it already had discarded.
Prior to the use of Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport, San Francisco officials filed a lawsuit after the Port of Oakland approved a change to San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport in 2024.
The litigation led to an injunction that prevented the Oakland airport from using the name that started with San Francisco.
The settlement, which was announced Tuesday and instantly took effect, ended a war of words between the two major Bay Area airports. Oakland had already begun to quietly use Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport in recent months.
The deal also includes some intriguing twists and restrictions on shifts in names, marketing, designations, or other endeavors related to the name of the Oakland airport.
The legal agreement bars Oakland from changing its International Air Transport Association name, commonly known as an airport code, from the current OAK designation to something that includes SF, such as OSF.
The deal comes at a time when all three Bay Area airports – Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose – have sputtered in their efforts to return to the lofty heights of passenger trips to which they had all climbed prior to the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020.
Even the swarm of visitors to the Bay Area for the Super Bowl in February and the game’s preceding events did little to lift the fortunes of the airports.