Sonoma County Airport, with David Andrews, General Manager

Sonoma County, a diverse county of over one million acres, is famed for its agriculture, industry and recreation, boasting a booming economy and unique lifestyle for its citizens. Described by the same Luther Burbank as the chosen spot of all the Earth, Sonoma County is the place to

live, work and play as we move into the 21st century. Led by the forward looking philosophy of its governing bodies, Cinema counties, 340,000 residents are, Ah, harmonious, successful blend of ethnic and economic backgrounds. We invite you to take a closer look at Sonoma County in the

nineties with your host rich McGlinchy. How you doing? Everybody Weapon to this edition of Sonoma County in the nineties, on location, on location, in a beautiful little with restaurant cocktail around at just a normal county airport. And fittingly enough, guest on this program. My friend David.

Andrew David, General manager. Nice to have you back for a long time. Thank you. Have never had such a lovely setting. Assist. How are you? I've been at the airport about 12 years now. How about back about your individual people who perhaps I've met you before?

What do you do before you became well, basically have been in aviation my entire adult life. Uh, I've been a flight instructor. I've been an air taxi pilot, computer on pilot, a six based operation manager, assistant airport manager and then that aviation director here for last

12 years. David airport itself goes back a long ways, but what is the background of the airports? Military airfields built in 1942 has turned over the county. About 1946 has been a county facility ever since. Then. Remember, during 40 to 46 it was Army Air Base.

Our Air Force bases was at Army air Base, and it was a P 38 p 39 base. Go back. Remember, David way here about the so called airport enterprise? What are we talking about? Well, I think the big difference between this airport and ah, lot of

airports is that this airport does not have any general tax fund money in it. At least hasn't had any in general tax fund money in it for more than a decade. Airport operates as an enterprise fund. That is. We operate the airport from the fees we

collect from the tenants in the airport users, as opposed to using general tax fund money to operate the airport. That's good news for taxpayers. There's no general phone or taxpayer money basically involved in the operation. That's correct. That's great. That's great. This is unusual. How many

enterprise flash? Joni actually have quite a number, depending on how you cut it down. I guess the two largest are maybe the three largest the hospital fair in the airport. Okay. Right. All right, David, there's a federal airport improvement program. Now. What is that with the

federal airport improvement program is a capital improvement program that is funded by a ticket tax on airline tickets that were sold and the federal government collects the attack, then distributed back to us to build major capital projects to re service. Runways were just in the process

now, finishing up about $1.2 million improvements that we used ap funds for drainage, some fencing in this new black asphalt ramp, you see out behind us, all paid for with these federal user taxes. David, since you've been here, when did you come here? What was your

first year? 1981. Okay, so about 11 years. What was it like when you took over was much smaller operation. We had about four airline flights a day, basically 8 to 10 passenger airplanes. Now it's 113 flights a day, and more than 100,000 passengers this year probably

go about 110,000 passengers this year. So significant change. I want to restate to the audience today that the airport is David. Torture is an enterprise fund operation and does not cause you and I the taxpayer additional general fund tax dollars it makes. In other words, it

pays its own way. But it's paid for by the people who use it. Yeah, that's great, David. There's a state known program for airports. What is this all about? What is the money where you come from? What do you do with the state loan program we

use is money that's accumulated from a tax on aviation gasoline and that money goes to state and then they will loan airport such as ours, that money to build revenue producing projects. We built about 37 units a hanger T hangars for aircraft a few years ago

using state loan. That project positive cash flow. Day one. And when it's paid off, there's probably half a dozen years or so to go on. That loan will be making about $75,000 a year off that project at today's rates. Assuming we don't increase the hangar, tied

down rates at all of another project will rebuild corporate hangers. Very nice. Large hangars complete with bathroom and so forth rent for $1250 a month. That project positive cash flow Day one and will generate $48,000 a year at today's rates when it's paid off, probably with

about 10 years. But we're making money off those projects today, just not those large amounts. So that's the kind of thing that way, try and do to generate revenue so that we don't need to use general tax dollars to operate the airport. And you were very,

very successful because they know we were talking earlier and you talked about last year. The report wound up with more money than it started out with. Absolutely, um, what airline services available here way have both United Express an American Eagle nine express goes to San Francisco

six times a day day in American Eagle goes to San Jose seven times a day, and they're both operating for all practical purposes. Identical airplanes there. 19 fashion airplanes with about a 25 or 30 minutes flying time to Sam's score. San Jose. Get it? One thing

we probably are got regress for a moment. What about your staff? Who were people who work with you at the airport to keep people well there? There are 10 of us total that operate the airport on. Everybody works at about 100 50%. That's what makes it

work. They understand the enterprise concept, and they work really hard to make it work. Your assistant managers. Who? Bob Becker. He's been with me the entire time I've been here and predates me for probably 10 years. My secretary has been quite a number of years to

have a lot of people with a lot of a lot of experience in history. Here, David, how many aircraft are stationed or quarter here? There's about 375 based airplanes, all of your airport. That's correct. Um, hey, also know if we have a car rental agency that's

correct. We get Hertz and Avis and thrifty car rentals available. Got to get that last thrifty. Oh, okay. Now, how many cars do they have? A place like this. How many do they keep ready for people? I guess if he went on counting today, there's probably

something like 150 rental cars here available. We do a tremendous volume and rental car business, One of our biggest revenue generators. I know we have probably later on in the question of your I'm gonna ask you about how many people fly in and out of here

during courses in the course of a year. Right now, it depends on the number of flights we have and airline ticket prices and so forth. But it looks like this calendar year will exceed 100,000. Probably up towards 110,000 that a number of people will be flying

in and out of here. That's correct. When you first came here, that was heard. Oh, yeah, the the 1985. We had 3400 passengers through the building, and he had now much more of the figure. Now is, uh, I think last 12 counter months has been 100

2003 to 4200 first of facilities want you much more of you, thanks to this program and the things you've done with it, the way you've used money, the airport itself. Beautiful way. We've put about a $1,000,000 a year in airport improvement money. That is that federal

user fee money into the airport each of the last 10 years. So there's been significant improvements to it. Yeah, you know, how does somebody just airport words what they want 1/4 themselves? They contact you or whoever you had working and see if your space available. That's

correct. That we're are the landlord way would negotiate a lease with them and and work something out for them. You know, they say right now, uh, depending depending what you want to do. We have We have a lot of bare land. Or if you wanted to

put in a significant investment, we could give you a long term lease. Uh, we're gonna talk about the the new business second over here, but the new business section I don't know what you call the airport. Airport, industrial park. Whatever. What is it called? Airport Boulevard.

Industrial Park in the West Winds Industrial Park is out there in the name of the 3rd 1 escapes me, but there are three major industrial parts to taste. A tremendous number of new businesses looking unbelievable. What's happened out there in the last 10 years? Basically, those

are empty field. 10 years ago on a long throw from center field home, you get to the Super 10 schools. Beautiful building, Beautiful. What about this little benefits we're sitting in right now? This is called the Aero. What restaurant I know this is. People are involved

with era would and also crooked restaurant, which is another Well, how has this been here and tell us, Look about hair. What era? Woods been here probably four or five years now, and we're real pleased with the job. Do they have what I call it California

cuisine? Eso. Itt's a little more into the pasta so forth. Great wine selection, as you can see. Terrific place. Teoh, come and have breakfast, breakfast, lunch or dinner. This area outside is really great. When when the weather is great, it's a great place to bring your

kids because you can see there's an eight foot fence along the field there, and so you can let your kids run around in the grass and turn somersaults and hang on the fence. There's nowhere they can go, but they're gonna be within 25 or 50 feet

of the airliners when they're on the gate. And so they have that tow watch where you're having your breakfast, lunch or dinner. So it is a great place to bring the family because there's a lot of entertainment and distraction for the Children. Besides just having to

sit quietly in a restaurant, behave themselves. You know, when we were talking a while ago about the services available here, we way mentioned American Eagle. What to where do they fly to from where did they apply to? American Eagle goes direct to San Jose and directly

back from San Jose, Okay, And so San Jose is the hub, and if you wanted to fly somewhere, say you wanted to fly to ST Louis, for example, you could get on American Eagle here, fly to San Jose, change planes that go on to ST Louis

as a general rule, take a price would be the same as if you drove to San Jose and picked up the flight there. No restrictions apply. See your travel agent. But as a general rule, you'd pay the same price starting out here at Sonoma County as

you would if you drove to San Jose or San Francisco and started your trip. They're terrific of the United Express. Now, that is that strictly a free organization. United Express also carries passengers. They today they're caring about 50% each other passenger load out of here now.

They also also, for that's correct way, also have United Parcel here, and we also have Federal Express here waiting kids. I know people that are interested in airports and aircraft. That sort of thing would probably want to hear this. Answer to this question. What general aviation

services are available right here, but we have just virtually anything that you could want. Renovation wise, short of perhaps a paint shop. But we have places that will teach you to fly place that we're running airplanes for you to fly. We have people who were chartered

airplanes that they will fly you around in way, have aircraft maintenance. Here we have navigation and radio repair for airplanes here So just about all the services aviation, gasoline and so forth hangers, tie downs, anything you need for renovation airplane we have here about Did you

mention repair? And that's absolutely all apart. Sure. Get everything you need for your record. Yes. How many private aircraft? Just in the course of a year, perhaps way. Run. About 150,000 annual takeoff landings Put a far cry from years ago, but they were gonna pause right

now. Ladies and gentlemen, we're bringing your destination of Sonoma County on 90 on location. Would restaurant and cocktail lounge, just County Airport. We'll be back with more questions for David Andrews about the operation of this airport in just one moment. The town I live in is

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everybody to this edition of Sonoma County in the nineties on location, location of the Beautiful era would restaurant and cocktail lounge at the Cinema County Airport. And logically speaking, my guess is therefore manager David Andrews. We've been talking about the airport, which, incidentally, has been here

since 1942 as a military airport. And David has been with us since 1981 during this period of time here, about 11 years, the airport has grown tremendously from something like 3000. What was that figure? 3 3400 airline passengers, your passengers over 100,000. You want Major David,

Let's go on talk more about the airport itself. One thing I know that I've heard about recently and I don't know anything about. I don't think our audience is. What specific Close Air Museum. The Pacific Coast Air Museum is a group of individuals who have basically

old military airplanes like the P 51 Mustang. We currently have this morning up there have three Groman albatrosses with a P B Y patrol bomber museum recently bought and Douglas A 26 that they are going to restore. And one of the members, just in the last

few days has purchased B 25. So we have quite a collection of ex military airplanes that the members work on and display and so forth here. Go back over that it was just a little bit. I think you are through pretty fast. What are some of

those key ones that we have P 51 Mustang, which is always somebody's favorite way Have Grumman Albatross, which is a big seaplane way. Have three of those here this morning. Uh, and we have a PV Why, which is an enormous, probably 100 foot wingspan, uh, patrol

bomber here on then, just the whole whole Siris of other type of military airplanes that these folks have been either flying or working on restoring? No, we were able to see those. They generally have an open house in August. In fact, they just had 12 or

three weeks ago where they invite the public out and they have all those available for display. Okay, Um, what about the Experimental Aircraft Association? We've heard about this. We don't know what it is. What does it do? So you tell Similar the Pacific Coast Air Museum

experiment. Aircraft says Chase is 150 plus members. They have a facility on the west side of the airport. They deal primarily with experimental aircraft, primarily home built aircraft, that people kill themselves. Plus, they have antique airplanes and there a few warbirds over there, too. So it's

another I would term a recreational type General aviation group That's very active on the airport. You said you aircraft, that people build themselves. People actually build their point. Oh, absolutely. They build some pretty sophisticated airplanes, wood, metal and composites. Very sophisticated airplanes over there. No, where

there was also be showing somewhere along they as general, The experimenter association has not had an open house on this facility. But there are other air shows around where they fly off and display those airplanes. There's another organization called Reach. What is reached. Where is it

they reach is the Redwood Empire Air Care Helicopter. Oh, and they have two helicopters based here to very fancy helicopters. And they have advanced life support ambulance service. So if someone has any kind of metal medical emergency and needs to be moved quickly reaches immediately available.

They keep two helicopters here, two pilots and made available to paramedics and be laid available. So this is a good place to have a medical problem. Way had someone have a heart attack in the trouble building a couple of weeks back, and within five minutes we

had 13 certified first responders in the building and we took the gentleman Had the heart attack out the front of the building. Had the helicopter right in front with airlines Airpark. They're loaded a minute and four minutes later he was at Memorial Hospital. These people do

an awesome job. They did about 475 patient transports last year. They primarily transport hospital hospital, so we have someone local area is burned, has a limb severed, then they're able to transport them down to the city to the proper care. Very, very quickly. Or in the

county. If somebody has a heart attack or some kind of injury in a remote area, they're able to pick them up and shuttle him here very quickly. They're flying time from Lake County. Turmoil is something on the order of 20 minutes. They do a tremendous job

for us. All right. Thank you very much for the opportunity, David. But I've already had four packs and I don't really want to have another one today. Just to test the ambulance service reaches really a life, do a tremendous job. It's very reassuring to have them

here and there to just to immediately available. What do you say to pilot, too? Two pilots. Four paramedics. Okay, we could have them available to this table within probably 3 to 5 minutes. All right. No, no, that's another thing. That what kind of headed Checkered History

of sense of work. What about the new maternity Sheriff's helicopter unit? Well, the Sonoma County Sheriff's helicopter unit is based here there do a tremendous job for us. They did over 1000 calls for service last year. Now they have a pilot, a deputy and a paramedic

immediately available there are immediately available to us. Also, they're based here on the airport. Now they do medical transport like Reach does, but they also do rescues, and they also do law enforcement. So someone's in the water of someone stuck on a cliff in the helicopters

on the way to get them. If there's a law enforcement mission, the sheriff's unit handles that, but, uh, reach Onley does medical flights a supposed to law enforcement rescue that the sheriff does. But it's a great team. If you have multiple injuries and sheriff go out

and do the rescue work and reach, come along and transport the people as a sheriff's, pull him out of the water off a cliff or whatever. So they really make a great team. Very lucky, really lucky to have been accounting Really lucky to have any county

sheriff's Hello country services rested. A lot of people from the day from the ocean, Absolutely. I just think they're tremendous. I don't believe they begin to get the credit that they should in the media for the job they dio Alright, what promote that more I know

that you do work with them. But how do you work with the California Department of Forestry? California department forced and fire protection has an air attack base here. And this time of year, basically from about May till October. They keep two air tankers here and we

keep a spotter plane here. Spotter plane is basically a flying air traffic control tower. Goes to see the fire. Directs the tankers on the fire. Two tankers are immediately available for wildfires in snow. More the surrounding counties. Very quick response. And if we need more air

tankers, they'll send us more air tankers. We've had as many as 19 air tankers working out of this airport in a single day. And the Oakland fires an example where the air response to the Oakland Fire came out of Sonoma County Airport. You have 18 tankers

working on 19 testers, 90 only smoke. Uh, one of the things that I've heard about other places in the wonder if we have it, do we have Ah, a automatic weather observation station here. And we have an automatic weather observation station here. We have just about

everything in electron ICS that we could reasonably want to have without being greedy. If you look out behind us here, the little red white building in the background is ah, navigation station. That gives pilots their distance direction to the airport, located in the same area as

an instrument landing system that allows pilots to land with visibilities as low 1/2 mile cities as low as 200 feet. Combined with those automatic weather observation station and the automatic weather observation station gives up to date weather right out there on the runway touchdown zone 24

hours a day, seven days a week, updated to the second and if you call 545 aws for automatic weather observation station on your phone, and you can get that 24 hours a day. So if someone in the audience was curious to know what the weather is

at the airport, you can just pick up the phone. It works really well for the pilots, and then if they're out of town and they're returning, they call it. But find out what the weather's like, particularly 19 air traffic control towers, not man. They'll know where

that even start to come to Sonoma County by knowing whether what the weather is here and then when they arrive in this area, and if they have to execute an instrument approach and come down through the clouds, they can also know what they're going to find

when they get to the airport. I just think it's one of the greatest safety enhancers that we could possibly put at the airport. Very, very helpful to the pilots. Saves people a lot of time. It saves people a lot of anxiety. How we have this. It's

probably been in operation a year or two. Relatively name really isn't more of his service absolutely very helpful. Relieve their minds. I think I know the answer to this next question, but, uh, maybe I don't do You get new is complete. Yes, we get noise complaints,

but but we get surprising a few noise complaints. Some of the other airports similar ours in the Bay Area. Get noise complaints in the thousands in the course of a year and generally would have ah full time noise abatement officer and usually very expensive hardware system.

We have been able to work with our neighbors and through the Board of Supervisors with the air transportation element general plan. And in all of last year, we got just 62 complaints whole calendar year. So we're real pleased about that. What, to what country did you

give a specific complaints way get complained to or something? Well, primarily, I would characterize complaints we get today as mawr, a low flying complaint as opposed to a noise complaint. If you really sit and talk to people and ask them what exactly the complaint is, you'll

find that as a general rule, the noise level probably wasn't any higher than the school bus going down the block or someone on a motorcycle. Something that they're really concern is the low over flight of the aircraft. What we found is particularly the last 10 years.

The noise level of airplanes has just been reduced dramatically, and so we don't have nearly the noise generated that we had a few years ago. So I would characterize most complaints that we get today as low flying complaints as opposed to noise complaints. Now pilots do

foolish things, just like people speed on your block and you see the speed limit pilots fly too low when they shouldn't and and people call us either my assistant Dry. I'll take those calls and return them and And if a pilot does something wrong, then we'll

go out there and we'll talk to them about it. And I think it's that educational program that has worked really well for us. I had instance here in the last couple of weeks where I got a couple of complaints on a Lear jet that was low

and loud, and I walked out to meet the crew, and when I got out there, they're standing there looking at their shoes and they said we knew you'd be here And they explained that they miss called their traffic. They ended up going out for than they

thought they had to. They got low. They had to add power. Hence the noise level came up, he said. We looked each other and said He's going to be there when we land And they said we made a mistake. We call the traffic wrong and we

were stuck and we there had at a lot of power and high, or it had this enough to keep what we had. Way knew that we were gonna get complaints, and that's part of that 62 complaints. Those things are gonna happen. People think steaks I get

important. Point of the story is the pilots were cognizant that there was gonna be a problem, but there were in a square where there wasn't much they could do. It's not something that they intentionally did or that they unknowingly did. And that's Mawr, that kind of

complaint that I see today than somebody who just doesn't understand noise complaints we have about a moment left you once gave us some travel tips about your luggage Quickly give that that well, one of repeat. I guess Everybody who flies has a horror story on on

their luggage, and they speak of lost luggage. But luggage almost never gets absolutely lost. That's really unusual. Mostly, it's just delay, and the secret is to get to the airport on time so that there's time to get your luggage on the airplane. Leave time when you

have connections, this time for your luggage to switch between airplanes. If you try and make things real tight, your luggage won't make it. We're just about out of time, and I want to remind people that proctor, luggage and these things that they just said. We'll help

you. Ladies and gentlemen, we're bringing you this edition of cinema can in the nineties, on rotation at the era would rest a cocktail lounge. Just returning airport. My guest has been David Andrew, manager off these Noma County Airport. I'll be back with you next week. Another

member of the county government family are related agency until then. Good night. Good luck. Good health. Each and every one of