Uber announced plans to offer in-app hotel listings and other “travel mode” features, while offering enhanced perks through its Uber One subscription. Meanwhile there's a pending lawsuit from the FTC alleging the company used deceptive billing practices tied to the membership.

Uber announced Wednesday it’s adding hotel bookings, along with the launch of a new “Travel Mode” across its apps, which bundles together trip-planning tools like restaurant recommendations, tourist attractions, and food reservations, as the Associated Press reports. The feature also provides enhanced delivery while traveling, with options to send meals, drinks, or forgotten essentials straight to a hotel room.

“Uber is becoming an app for everything — helping people go, get, and now travel all in one place,” said Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, in a press release. “We’re all living through a moment of real cognitive overload: too many apps, too many decisions, too much noise. At the end of the day, our job is to help people reclaim their time, spending less of it managing the logistics of life and more of it actually living.”

Uber will soon be listing roughly 700,000 hotels and other property listings from Expedia Group, and around a million vacation rentals from Vrbo are expected to follow later this year. Uber rides will also soon be bookable inside Expedia’s app, with discounted ride prompts tied to hotel stays.

Hotel bookings will be open to all users, but members of Uber One — which runs $9.99 a month — will get steeper perks, including discounted rates on a rotating pool of hotels and credits that can be applied to future rides.

The New York Times notes that the Federal Trade Commission sued Uber last year, and the case is still pending. The FTC alleges that Uber failed to clearly disclose the Uber One subscription terms to its customers and made cancellations difficult.

Additionally, the company says users will also soon be able to book restaurant tables via OpenTable directly in-app, as competitors like DoorDash move into the same space with their own reservation tools. Uber is also reportedly testing a service that lets riders pre-order snacks or drinks to have ready when they’re picked up in an Uber Black vehicle, with launches planned in cities including Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles.

“Consumers are spending too much time coordinating their life, using multiple apps. AI is in the air and they’re all trying to figure out, how does AI help me or does it not help me?” said Sachin Kansal, Uber’s chief product officer, speaking to the AP. “Our goal with these announcements is to bring everything into one app, to help them save time, and to also help them save money.”

Company officials note that tens of millions of riders use Uber for airport trips each year, and a large share of rides happen outside a user’s home city, per the AP.

Meanwhile, sexual assault cases continue to pile up against Uber, per the Times. Earlier this month, the company lost two early test cases tied to lawsuits over sexual assaults involving drivers, with thousands of similar claims still pending.

As SFist reported in March, the company expanded its feature to specifically request female drivers to more US cities in light of mounting sexual assault cases.

Related: Uber Expands Female Driver Request Feature In US as Assault Cases Rise

Image: Frazao Studio Latino/Getty Images

Taking the guesswork out of how early you need to be at the airport, United Airlines has added a very helpful feature to its app, in the midst of an ongoing congressional impasse over the funding that keeps TSA operating.

The partial government shutdown that kept TSA employees from being paid for over a month — the second shutdown affecting their pay in the last six months — is still not over. And while the situation at security checkpoints improved somwhat this week after a Trump executive order led to at least partial paychecks going out, and fewer sick calls, security-line wait times at some of the nation's airports remain higher than usual.

United Airlines has rolled out a new app feature — and one that might have been even more helpful two weeks ago — that provides real-time line-standing estimates at airport security at SFO and the airline's six other hubs.

The feature is available under the Travel tab on the app and will be visible on the information page for your upcoming flight. The module provides estimated wait times for both regular TSA and TSA Pre-Check, and shows which checkpoint at a given airport has the shortest line when you arrive.

The feature is available at SFO, Chicago O'Hare, Denver, Houston Bush Intercontinental, LAX, Washington Dulles, and Newark airports.

"We appreciate the work and professionalism of our TSA agents, and while most began receiving back pay earlier this week, the US Department of Homeland Security shutdown continues and people want to stay informed about expected security wait times at our airports," said Jason Birnbaum, United's Chief Information Officer, in a statement. "Our customers rely on our mobile app for all their travel needs, and this new feature lets them know what to expect and better plan their trip."

The TSA wait-time feature rolls out today on the United app along with multiple other new features, including Apple AirTag integration for baggage tracking, automated rebooking assistance, and turn-by-turn directions for finding connecting gates.

United is the primary carrier operating at SFO, representing about 50% of all passenger traffic into and out of the airport.

As we learned earlier this week, around 25% of all flights at the airport are likely to experience takeoff and landing delays in the next six months due to a runway repaving project that is closing two of the airport's four runways.

Nine Bay Area airports, including SFO and Oakland, are on the FAA’s “hot spot” list notifying pilots about areas on the ground at US airports that could potentially be the sites of collisions or near-misses due to confusing layouts and busy runway crossings.

As the Chronicle reports, the Federal Aviation Administration keeps an ongoing list of over 150 “hot spot” US airports, with the aim of bringing awareness to pilots and drivers on the ground about areas that have a history of collisions or near-misses — or areas that pose a potential risk, according to the FAA. Thirty-four California airports are included on the list, including San Francisco International Airport, Oakland International Airport, and Mineta San Jose International, and six others in the Bay Area.

“We review these hot spots regularly with the FAA, airlines, and ground operators to heighten awareness and develop mitigation strategies,” SFO spokesperson Doug Yakel told the Chronicle.

At SFO, the FAA identified four ground “hot spots” tied to navigation errors and unclear markings, as the Chronicle reports. In one area, pilots taxiing east on Taxiway B have turned onto the wrong path, putting their planes in danger; and in another area of the airport, missed turns have led aircraft to cross active runways, per the Chronicle. Two additional locations involve uncertainty about where to stop before runway crossings, particularly where pavement markings are less visible.

The Chronicle reports that at Oakland International Airport, three areas were flagged for potential confusion on the ground. In one, similarly labeled taxiways intersecting a runway have led to mix-ups. In another, aircraft departing the gate have missed turns and continued toward a runway. A third involves a taxiway segment where the risk of entering a runway without clearance is elevated.

At least three close calls have occurred at SFO in the past year. In June 2025, as SFist reported, an overtired air traffic controller cleared a plane to cross an active runway in error before the pilot caught it. And in May 2025, two planes came within about a mile of each other in flight, as the Chronicle reported. In September, as People magazine reported, a ground collision occurred between two United Airlines planes in an area where air traffic controllers “do not communicate with flights.”

As SFist reported in 2023, runway close calls are becoming a growing problem nationwide. Multiple incidents at SFO drew national attention that year, including three near-misses in a single day where planes came within 30 to 50 feet of each other, and two aborted landings after pilots spotted aircraft still on the runway.

In 2017, as SFist reported, an Air Canada jet almost landed on a taxiway lined with planes full of passengers, coming close to killing over 1,000 people. In that case, the pilot had mistaken Taxiway C for a runway, and an air traffic controller managed to catch the error and tell the pilot to pull up just in time.

According to Yakel, SFO began implementing various improvements in 2024, per the Chronicle.

“Such strategies may be procedural, or they may be consist of physical improvements, such as this taxiway improvement project completed in 2024, or the runway project starting later this month, which includes adjacent taxiway work,” Yakel said.

Yakel said “hot spot” airports are often kept on the list even after improvements are made, ensuring that airport personnel continue to be mindful of the risks.

Image: Russss/Wikimedia

Related: Close Calls on SFO Runways Are Just Tip of the Iceberg In Broader National Trend

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

Millions of people are headed in and out of the Bay in this year’s holiday travel rush. And Bay Area airports are reporting that those numbers are way higher than last year’s.

SFO reports a 14% increase in travelers this holiday season, compared to 2022, according to KNTV. San Jose Airport has also seen a 9% jump this year. And per KTVU, Oakland International Airport expects a 3% increase over the same time period.

It’s unclear if that number takes into account the 2022 travel holiday season’s weather delays and infamous Southwest Airlines meltdown (the airline just agreed to a record-setting $140 million civil penalty for the mess on Monday, as Reuters reports).

Luckily, according to KNTV, there have been relatively few flight delays at SFO and San Jose this weekend amid the rush.

Still, Saturday, Dec. 23, saw high levels of traffic across California freeways, per SFGATE. But if you're headed out on the road last minute, Sunday, Dec. 24, and Monday, Dec. 25, should have minimal traffic.

Feature image via Unsplash/Duke Cullinan.

It's been at least three years of a steady stream of national headlines about San Francisco being in a state of chaos, or a state of general misery, and being a wildly expensive and filthy city that people can't wait to escape from. But suddenly, some editors on high have decided San Francisco is OK again, and still very pretty, and maybe it has something to do with the Presidio Tunnel Tops opening? Is the pendulum finally swinging back to where people are jealous of San Franciscans again?

Time Magazine recently saw fit to include San Francisco in its "World's Greatest Places" list — something that seems almost unthinkable a year or two ago.

"San Francisco’s incredible scenery, cultural institutions, and diverse culinary offerings are all making major strides this year," the magazine writes. "Overnight visitors have a wide selection of new hotels to choose from" too, they say — pointing to the new 1 Hotel on the Embarcadero and the still-not-actually-open LINE SF.

Time also calls out the upcoming Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco — which opens October 1 — and the just opened Presidio Tunnel Tops park as new draws for tourists.

And, yes, as opposed to last summer, most of the city's noteworthy restaurants are back up and rolling at full capacity, so there's that too.

Smithsonian Magazine has a glowing piece about the Presidio Tunnel Tops this week too, listing it among other "infrastructure reuse projects that have completely reshaped North American cities in recent years."

The New York Times turned to local writer Lauren Sloss for a piece headlined "San Francisco Shines With New Museums, Restaurants and Parks" this week, which also calls out the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Tunnel Tops, but goes a bit deeper noting things like Francisco Park in Russian Hill, the opening of Shuggie's Trash Pie & Natural Wine and other hot natural wine spots like Bar Part Time, as well as the awesome outdoor spaces now available at Nopa and Casements.

I guess a few new parks, restaurants, and a new museum are enough to wipe away the hangover of Trump and Fox News trash-talking us for four years, and two years of a pandemic that brought a hundred headlines about the "mass exodus" of SF residents. Was it all Chesa Boudin's fault?!

Remember when the New York Times' own SF bureau chief lamented about his fatigue at covering wildfires for three of his first four years on the job? And that was in August 2020! There is and was much more to come.

And remember, long before the pandemic began, in May 2019, when the New Yorker published a piece by a writer living here who talked about how everyone she knew was "down on San Francisco these days" and couldn't "envision a future here."

Even just a few short weeks ago, former SF resident Nellie Bowles filed her contribution to the genre of think-pieces known as "why I had to leave San Francisco and why it really sucks there now." Calling her hometown a "failed city," Bowles' piece was pegged to the recall of Chesa Boudin and repeated a bunch of oft-repeated falsehoods — including the idea that SF is a special magnet for the homeless because our services for the homeless are so generous.

As Sloss intones, despite all the negative press, "San Francisco is still San Francisco. The fog still rolls in from the Pacific to blanket the city’s jumbled hills, the sunset still flames crimson behind the Golden Gate Bridge and the smell of salt and eucalyptus still hits the moment you step outside of San Francisco International Airport."

And hey everybody out there having a gross heatwave right now! We're sitting pretty over here with our new parks and stuff and 65-degree afternoons.

But, if you listen to this guy, the place is still going to hell, and the streets are nothing but "fentanyl addicts jerking off in the streets and just throwing feces," so, believe who you will.

Photo via SF Dept. of Public Health/Twitter

The travel rebound is being very, very good to Airbnb, which just raked in more money than in any other quarter, even though the average booking price is down $12 a day.

A trip to Fisherman’s Wharf will show you that tourism is picking back up in San Francisco, a trend that will hopefully skyrocket when international traveler restrictions are lifted here in the U.S. this Monday, November 8. That’s great for the hotels, bartenders, and gift shops, but it is apparently even better for Airbnb. In their quarterly earnings call Thursday, Airbnb reported record-high revenue, and record quarterly income of $834 million.

"Something bigger than a travel rebound is happening. The world is undergoing a revolution of how we live and work," co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky said on the call. "For the first time ever, people can travel any time, anywhere, for any length, and live on Airbnb. This trend towards more flexibility will only accelerate."

OK of course he’s going going to say people can “live on Airbnb,” every founder/CEO-type thinks people want to metaverse their stupid brand into the entirety of our everyday existence. But he may have a point that companies are going to be more friendly to remote work, even when the pandemic hopefully subsides more, so Airbnb could be well-positioned to book more stays from people who are working while traveling, still need reliable wi-fi, and don't like traditional hotels and motels.

Except Airbnb doesn’t call them “stays” anymore, they call them “experiences.” And they did notch 80 million of them over the third quarter of 2021, which is great compared to the dismal 2020, but actually down 7% compared to 2019. Still, the company is probably in a good spot considering the pent-up travel demand, though brace yourself if you live next to a terrible Airbnb house.

CNBC has a very thorough account of Airbnb’s quarterly numbers, and they do find an interesting quirk: the average price per night is down. "Average daily rates for the company dropped to $149 from roughly $161 in the last quarter,” CNBC points out.

Related: Airbnb Gets Dragged For Asking People To Donate Cash To Homeowner Hosts [SFist]

Image: @stephen2002 via Unsplash

Airbnb just dropped some serious cash in the lap of restaurant-reservation app Resy, marking Airbnb's first official foray into restaurant booking tied with travel and lodging. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the partnership comes with a Resy board seat for Airbnb, and was originally announced late last year, but now we learn that it's worth $13 million in funding, meaning that Airbnb is the lead investor in Resy's current funding round.

The move points to Airbnb's intention to become a one-stop shop for travelers, and it's no doubt connected to the aforementioned launch of the company's Trips section featuring curated city guides and "Experiences."

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky issued a statement saying, "Many of our most-treasured travel memories come from experiencing the local food. Helping people find and book incredible local restaurants is a key part of us moving beyond just accommodation to focus on the whole trip. We can’t think of a better partner than Resy to help make this possible."

As Venturebeat reports, Resy was founded two years ago in New York in part by a cofounder of Eater.com, Ben Leventhal, who serves as Resy's CEO. Initially, back in the heady days of 2014, the app allowed ballers and wealthy foodinistas to pay for reservations at high-end dining destinations, ostensibly allowing them to bid up the price of a last-minute seat before they'd even ordered any food. Resy has, wisely, backed off of that model, and now just functions like a more curated, higher end version of OpenTable. Resy is dwarfed in market share, however, with about 1,000 restaurants in 50 markets, compared to OpenTable's 40,000.

Resy is also, as the Journal points out, integrating some new technology into their system, for instance providing Apple Watch notifications to waitstaff when a new table is seated in their section. For diners, the Resy app provides push notifications in real time as new tables become available at desirable times, and they've already done an integration with the Uber app.

The Airbnb app is expected to feature Resy reservation integration by April, according to the Journal, though Eater says that may happen as soon as February.

In related news, Hearst publications is launching an Airbnb magazine this year, dedicated to "all things Airbnb."

Previously: Airbnb Does About-Face, Says It Will Crack Down On Scofflaw Hosts In SF

BART riders at 24 St. station headed to SFO/peninsula told:take alternative trans. due to track power cable issue. pic.twitter.com/BSDipE0wJB

— Cbarnard (@CornellBarnard) August 12, 2016

Bay Area commuters are doubtlessly wondering why they didn't just "work from home" today, after a fire on BART's tracks halted travel for two hours this morning, and left the transit agency with delays expected to continue all day.

The misery began at around 4:45 this morning, when BART reported one of their ubiquitous "equipment problem"s on the trackway near the 24th Street Station in San Francisco.

The problem, according to CBS 5, was that "a bad insulator, one of the pieces of equipment that powers the third rail, failed and caused a small fire."

The fire stopped BART trains literally in their tracks, with no passage through the smoky area and service south of the station (including all eastbound travel from 24th Street on) halted.

The San Francisco Fire Department extinguished the blaze, and "trains were once again running south of the 24th Street Station by 6:50 a.m. but were single-tracking from 24th Street to Daly City," the Chron reports, making for a slow — but, at last, moving — commute.

According to the Chron, damage to BART's “automatic train control system" means that the transit agency will continue to single track through the area all day Friday. KQED reports that this should slow the average BART trip through the area down by six to eight minutes, so plan accordingly.

BART spokesman Taylor Huckaby says that BART should be back to their usual standard of excellence Saturday, however, as "damage to the automatic train control system at Balboa Park will be repaired overnight."

As the final stage of San Francisco International Airport's $4.1 billion 10-year capital improvement plan, Terminal 1 is getting partially demolished in favor of two new boarding areas, a central check-in and security space, and new baggage claim and mezzanine areas.

The Business Times had word that construction will begin on June 29 and last until 2020. A temporary boarding area is opening this month to serve the domestic airlines typically housed in the terminal: Delta, US, Alaska, and Frontier.

The most recent renovation, the penultimate of the capital improvement plan, was completed this year: That was of Terminal 3, and it added three more boarding gates and streamlined, centralized security. Previous to that, Terminal 2 renovations were completed in 2011, bringing more dining options, two yoga rooms, and a "recomposure zone."

SFO saw 50 million total passengers in 2015, its most ever in line with record tourism numbers in San Francisco overall that year. Meanwhile, the Mercury News reported earlier this month that Oakland is also at work increasing its number of nonstop flights to Oakland International Airport.

Related: Virgin America To Remain Its Own Separate Brand For Now, Maybe Forever

A woman flying from Chicago to San Francisco died while in transit this weekend, after her "medical emergency" forced the plane to make an unplanned stop in Montana.

According to the Billings Gazette, the United Airlines 737 left Chicago at 7 p.m. Saturday night, and was headed to San Francisco International Airport.

At 9:30 p.m., as the plane passed over South Dakota, air traffic controllers at Montana's Billings Logan International Airport were notified that the plane would be landing there due to a passenger's medical emergency.

The flight landed at 10 p.m., where it was met by emergency crews and paramedics.

When contacted by SFist, a spokesperson with the Yellowstone County Medical Examiner & Coroner says that 42-year-old passenger Tina Matthews of Antioch was pronounced dead at the scene.

Passengers on the flight deplaned while the aircraft was inspected and refueled. They then reboarded, and by midnight were back in the air. They landed at SFO at around 1:20 a.m. Sunday.

As of Monday morning, the cause of Matthews' death had not been released. According to the Coroner's spokesperson, an autopsy on her remains has been scheduled.

San Francisco attorney Joseph Alioto says it began on April 1st. On that day, he told
CBS 5's Consumer Watch, United, American, and Delta airlines changed a policy that automatically charged the lowest fares on each leg of multi-leg flights.

Consider two one-way flights, the first from Los Angeles to Houston, the second from Houston to New Orleans. Together they once cost $189. Now, the two flights must be booked as one ticket, at a price of $363.

“It’s price fixing,” Alioto told the news channel. Even the language the three airlines used, Alioto remarks, was basically the same.

Working together, the attorney alleges, the three companies were able to make a change benefitting them all that no single one of them could have made individually. "They discovered that some legs were so low because those were in areas in which they were competing with low cost carriers,” he said. Alioto has filed a lawsuit on behalf of travel agents, but American called it “completely without merit."

Well, it looks like he may have been onto some collusion amongst the airlines, which is not a new accusation. As CNN reported, the Department of Justice last July sent subpoenas to at least United, American, and Southwest Airlines. Specifically, CNN writes that the "possible unlawful coordination" has to do with limiting capacity increases, artificially diminishing supply.

"We welcome the review," a spokesperson for American said at the time. "Demand has been enabled by a robust and competitive marketplace in which capacity has been added and average fares have decreased."

As major airline mergers take place and airlines such as Virgin are sold — that one went to Alaska Airlines — Travel Association President and CEO Roger Dow has expressed his concern.

"If not for the radical consolidation we have seen in the airline industry in the last few years, we probably would not even be having this conversation. Now that four carriers control 85 percent of domestic routes, 'collusion' is a thought that's constantly going to be in the back of the minds of federal regulators," Dow said in a statement.

Previously: [Update] Virgin America Sold To Alaska Airlines

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