Vol. I, No. 36 · San Francisco — Friday, September 11, 2026 · Price: shipped standby, belly hold only
BY MEL ADLER, COMMERCE DESK
In 2000, Federal Express landed more cargo at San Francisco International than any other airline, 133.9 million pounds of freight in a single year, almost all of it off planes built to carry nothing but boxes. Federal Express still flies into SFO. It now carries about a fifth of that.
The airport’s whole freighter business has followed FedEx down. San Francisco International’s dedicated cargo planes carried 666.4 million pounds of freight in 2000, the busiest year in the airport’s cargo records, which begin in mid-1999. By 2025 that had fallen to 241.1 million pounds, a drop of 64 percent. SFO’s total air-cargo tonnage fell too, but only by 37 percent over the same quarter-century. The freight that did not disappear moved into the belly holds of ordinary passenger jets. They now carry four-fifths of everything that flies as cargo through the airport, up from about two-thirds in 2000. A shipment that once needed a plane built only to carry boxes now more often rides for free beneath paying passengers’ luggage.
Twenty-one airlines flew dedicated freighters into SFO in 2000. Twelve did in 2025. Federal Express, the airport’s biggest cargo carrier that year, has fallen into a virtual tie for second place with ABX Air, 412,000 pounds apart on tonnage in the tens of millions, its own freighter tonnage down 78 percent to 30.0 million pounds. The airline that now moves the most freighter cargo through SFO is Air Transport International, a charter carrier that flies contract routes for other companies’ branded freight networks rather than under its own name. It carried 92.1 million pounds in 2025, more than triple Federal Express’s total.
On the passenger side, one airline now dominates. United Airlines carried 456.2 million pounds of freight in the belly holds of its scheduled flights in 2025, 48 percent of every pound SFO’s passenger jets carried that year. The next-largest passenger carrier, EVA Airways, carried 55.4 million pounds, 12 percent of United’s total. United’s share follows from its own SFO hub. The airline flies more long-haul widebody routes out of the airport than any competitor, and a widebody’s hold is large enough to carry freight alongside checked bags without displacing a single passenger.
The one year freighters gained ground was 2020. Passenger flights had been grounded, and the belly holds that now carry most of SFO’s freight went empty with them. Dedicated freighters filled part of that gap. Their share of the airport’s cargo jumped to 39 percent that year, the highest since 2008, before the decline resumed. A third aircraft type, the half-passenger, half-cargo combi jet, carried 53.2 million pounds of SFO freight in 2002, its peak year. It has not carried a pound since 2016.
Confidence is high on the counts themselves. The Airport Commission publishes cargo weight by airline and aircraft type every month, and this desk’s own sums for 2000 and 2025 match the file’s totals exactly. The read is softer on why. Whether shippers moved to belly cargo because it is cheaper, because e-commerce favors speed over bulk, or because airlines simply added more passenger widebodies is not something this file can answer.
Twenty-six years ago, a plane that flew nothing but boxes was the ordinary way to move freight out of San Francisco. Now it is the exception, riding under someone else’s suitcase.
Sales Tax Fell 22% in Dorsey’s District, Rose 12% in Melgar’s
Since 2019, San Francisco’s sales-tax base has pulled apart by geography: down sharply in the SoMa-to-Mission-Bay district Supervisor Matt Dorsey represents, up in the westside residential district Supervisor Myrna Melgar represents.
BY CONSTANCE FEENEY, CITY HALL
Rincon Hill’s office towers and Mission Bay’s biotech campuses sit inside the same political district, San Francisco’s Sixth, represented by Supervisor Matt Dorsey. Its taxable sales have fallen further since 2019 than any of the city’s other ten supervisor districts.
District 6 runs from Mid-Market through SoMa, Rincon Hill and South Beach to Mission Bay and Treasure Island. It collected $40.7 million in local sales tax in 2019. In the year ending this spring it collected $31.8 million, a decline of 22 percent. That is the steepest drop of the city’s eleven supervisor districts, almost twice the citywide decline of 12 percent.
Only one district moved the other way by double digits. District 7 covers the westside swath of Inner Parkside, the Inner Sunset and West Portal, and it is represented by Supervisor Myrna Melgar. Its sales tax rose 12 percent over the same stretch, to $8.0 million from $7.2 million.
The two districts sit at opposite ends of the same divide. District 6 contains most of downtown’s office towers, hotels and convention business, in Mid-Market, SoMa and Rincon Hill, plus Mission Bay’s biotech campuses. District 7 is almost entirely residential blocks, with comparatively little commercial office space to lose. The dollar amounts are not symmetric either: District 6’s decline, about $8.9 million a year, is more than ten times the size of District 7’s roughly $875,000 gain.
In 2019, District 6 collected nearly six times what District 7 did, $40.7 million against $7.2 million. Today the gap has narrowed to about four times. District 7’s growth explains only part of that. Most of it is District 6’s decline.
Confidence is high on the sales-tax totals themselves. They come from the city’s own quarterly collections file, broken out by supervisor district, and this desk’s sums match the file exactly for both the 2019 baseline and the most recent four quarters. Confidence is lower on cause: the file cannot say whether downtown’s office and retail slump, a residential district’s relative shelter from it, or something else entirely drove the two districts apart. It only says that they did.
ON THE CALENDAR
Mahjong Party for AI Builders. A recurring game night pairing mahjong tutorials and open play with informal networking for the city’s AI industry, hosted by the workflow-automation company Workato in Dogpatch. Registration is closed: 197 people had signed up as of 2:13 a.m. today, up from 30 when the desk first logged the listing on August 27. Of three AI-industry gatherings the desk tracked heading into this week, only a database meetup drew more signups, 262; this one topped an infrastructure night’s 148.
Friday evening, September 11 · Dogpatch · free, sold out · lu.ma/fm6e4puk
From the desk’s calendar: public Luma pages, counts as of 2:13 a.m. September 11. Tell the desk about the gathering it missed.
SOURCES & RECEIPTS
1. SFO Air Traffic Cargo Landings Statistics, DataSF u397-j8nr, queried live September 11, 2026, monthly rows by operating airline, cargo type and aircraft type back to July 1999. Total cargo weight (lbs) by year: 2000 1,880,856,904; 2025 1,184,115,433 (-37.1%). Freighter weight: 2000 666,387,684 (35.4% of total); 2025 241,111,513 (20.4%) (-63.8%). Passenger-belly weight: 2000 1,196,878,669 (63.6%); 2025 943,003,920 (79.6%). Freighter share by year 2000-2025: 35.4, 33.9, 37.8, 41.2, 43.6, 45.4, 44.9, 43.0, 40.0, 38.5, 37.1, 36.3, 33.6, 31.4, 30.9, 34.1, 30.9, 27.9, 25.6, 24.0, 39.3, 34.9, 30.3, 26.6, 22.3, 20.4. Combi (half-passenger, half-cargo) weight: peak 53,217,835 lbs in 2002; last nonzero year 2015 (837,756 lbs); zero every year 2016-2025. 2. Same source, grouped by operating_airline where cargo_aircraft_type=‘Freighter’: distinct freighter airlines 2000 = 21; 2025 = 12. Federal Express freighter weight: 2000 133,904,884 (rank 1 of 21); 2025 30,025,957 (rank 3 of 12, -77.6%). Top freighter carrier 2025: Air Transport International, Inc., 92,146,127 lbs; second, ABX Air, 30,438,322 lbs. 3. Same source, grouped by operating_airline where cargo_aircraft_type=‘Passenger’, calendar 2025: United Airlines 456,232,578 (48.4% of 943,003,920 total passenger-belly weight); EVA Airways 55,360,025 (12.1% of United’s total). Full queries and raw responses in receipts.json.
2. Sales Tax by Supervisor District, DataSF wqri-5uyd, queried live September 11, 2026, 495 rows, 11 districts by quarter, 2015Q1-2026Q1. 2019 totals (sum of 4 quarters) and trailing four quarters (2025Q2-2026Q1) by district, with percent change: D1 $5,730,349.92 to $6,006,632.27 (+4.8%); D2 $14,527,294.27 to $13,508,149.90 (-7.0%); D3 $43,657,134.26 to $37,825,161.30 (-13.4%); D4 $3,521,888.40 to $3,869,837.85 (+9.9%); D5 $13,045,153.20 to $11,699,556.57 (-10.3%); D6 $40,734,826.76 to $31,787,934.61 (-22.0%); D7 $7,155,860.04 to $8,030,818.72 (+12.2%); D8 $4,721,911.01 to $4,793,186.07 (+1.5%); D9 $13,727,877.23 to $12,518,586.38 (-8.8%); D10 $17,336,348.66 to $14,945,566.29 (-13.8%); D11 $2,591,958.66 to $2,324,645.61 (-10.3%). Citywide (sum of all 11): 2019 $166,750,602.41; trailing four quarters $147,310,075.57 (-11.7%). 2. District boundary descriptions and current supervisor names verified against the San Francisco Board of Supervisors roster table, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Board_of_Supervisors, retrieved September 11, 2026: District 6, Matt Dorsey (Mid-Market, Rincon Hill/East Cut, South of Market, South Beach, Mission Bay, Treasure Island, Yerba Buena Island); District 7, Myrna Melgar (Inner Parkside, Golden Gate Heights, Inner Sunset, Parnassus Heights, West Portal, and surrounding westside neighborhoods). 3. Same source (note 2); office-vacancy or retail-occupancy rates for either district were not independently pulled tonight, so the geographic description rests on the boundary list alone, not a separate vacancy measure. Full queries and raw responses in receipts.json.
The Frisconian · Published from forty-nine square miles surrounded by reality · @deaconsanti