Advice For Travelers During SFO Runway Repairs: Call Your Airline Now

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT (KPIX) - The restoration of Runway 28 L has turned the arrivals and departures board into a one-stop shop for annoyed travelers at SFO.

Chris McGinnis, the editor of Travel Skills on SFGATE.com says the best idea to avoid becoming one of the 33 percent of travelers with delayed or canceled flights during construction is to call your airline now, and fly out of somewhere other than SFO.

"Many of them are working with customers on a case-by-case basis. Try to find an alternative flight out of Oakland or out of San Jose," McGinnis told KPIX5.

Changing your flight for convenience and sanity's sake might just cost you even more cash, though.

"You typically have to pay a change fee, which is typically $200 plus any change in fare. So if the change in fare price has gone up since the time you booked it - there's a difference in price," McGinnis said.

Most airlines are waving the change fees, but it is at the moment a fluid situation. McGinnis says your best bet is to call.

If it seems like we've been here before with a re-paving project at SFO, you are not wrong. The same type of project happened in 2017.

"In 2017, the airport did a major resurfacing project at SFO and found out that the runway was in worse shape than they thought," McGinnis says.

That's when the large scale repaving of runway 28L was scheduled for this month - all month long. In 2017, the work only happened on the weekend, now it's going on 24-7.

"If they had split this work into weekends, every weekend would've been affected between now and probably Christmas, because the project is such a big one."

McGinnis is confident that the hundreds of delays and cancellations a day won't last until September 27, as scheduled.

"They provide a big window and it ends up they finish earlier than expected - everyone's happy and like phew, thank god that's over with," McGinnis said.