Issue No 22 THE AVIATION HISTORIAN 69
W
ITH THE CITY of San Francisco and
San Francisco International Airport
(SFO) being on a peninsula about ten
miles (16km) across San Francisco
Bay from Oakland International
Airport (OAK), and with other major towns and
cities to the north and south on the mainland,
the geography of the California Bay Area is ideal
for a regional passenger air service. The San
Francisco Peninsula connects to the mainland
to the north via the Golden Gate Bridge and to
the east via the Bay, San Mateo and Dumbarton
Bridges. Getting across the bridges in heavy
traffic, however, can be famously slow work.
It was this state of affairs at the dawn of the
1960s which set the stage for the formation of
San Francisco & Oakland Helicopter Airlines,
commonly known as SFO Helicopter.
INTO BUSINESS
Founded in 1961 and headed by company
president Michael F. Bagan, SFO Helicopter
began service in June of that year. The airline
offered flights between SFO, Downtown
San Francisco Heliport, OAK and Oakland
Downtown Heliport. One of the company’s main
roles was shuttling passengers from OAK to SFO
to make their connecting flights.
The first helicopter airline to fly only turbine-
engined helicopters, SFO Helicopter was one
of the first such firms to do business without
the aid of a federal subsidy; it applied for a
Certificate of Public Convenience & Necessity,
but in the meantime qualified under Civil
Aeronautics Board (CAB) regulations as an air-
taxi operator.
Services started with two ten-passenger
Sikorsky S-62A single-engined helicopters
leased from the manufacturer (with an option to
purchase), and by the late summer of 1961 the
SFO Helicopter schedule listed 68 daily flights. A
1961 news clipping reports that SFO Helicopter
was then flying two S-62As and had optioned
a third to expand its services in due course to
Palo Alto, Berkeley, San Jose and Sacramento
(although the airline never ultimately served the
state capital). Igor Sikorsky himself was present
for the groundbreaking ceremony at the Berkeley
Heliport in September 1961. From SFO, flights
operated from Gate 29 and later from TWA Gate
53 and American Airlines Gate 45.
A partnership with Pacific Southwest Airlines
(PSA) was brokered in 1962 to expand PSA’s
number of destinations via the extension of
SFO’s five-station helicopter service, downtown
Berkeley having been added in mid-September- (Curiously, the airline’s June and August
1962 timetables also list “ISC Heliport —
Sunnyvale”, seemingly a reference to a stop at
the International Science Center Heliport, but
this had been dropped by November the same
year.) Thus, a PSA passenger arriving at SFO
could then fly by helicopter to OAK, Oakland
Downtown Heliport (JOK), Berkeley Heliport
(JBK) or Downtown San Francisco Heliport at
the Ferry Building (JFO).
In 1962, for those taking SFO Helicopter from
OAK to SFO to fly on to New York to connect
OPPOSITE PAGE Promotional leaflets of SFO Helicopter highlighted the company’s ability to circumvent San
Francisco’s heavy bridge traffic with its fleet of choppers and hovercraft, as this graphic from a 1966 timetable
shows. ABOVE Sikorsky S-62 N978 (c/n 62-009) was delivered to the company when it was established in 1961.
PHILIP JARRETT COLLECTION