Sonoma County Airport, Santa Rosa, 1990

Sonoma County, a diverse county of over one million acres is famed for its agriculture industry and recreation boasting a booming economy and a unique lifestyle for its citizens described by the famed 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. Sonoma County's 340,000 residents are a 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 McGlinchey. Everybody welcome to Sonoma County in the 90s on this program, we're going to be talking about the Sonoma County Airport. We've, we've talked about this in the past, but there are a lot of things happening out there. We're gonna

talk to the gentleman who is the Director of aviation or airport Director. His name is Dave Andrews and David. Nice to have you back. I haven't seen you for a long time. It seems like forever. Alright, we're gonna talk about four or 5 different subjects tonight.

And I think the first segment, let's talk about the enhanced commercial airline service. I know this is taking place and maybe the best way to get into it is how many number. What's the number? How many flights are there per day? Currently we have 16 commercial

flights today running four flights direct. Los Angeles three flights direct to san Jose and the balance go to SAn Francisco san Francisco san Jose and Los how many Los Angeles? Four per day. Okay. And these, these are direct flights. That's correct. That's correct. Flying time, what

are we talking about here? Flying time to the city to san Francisco is about 25 minutes. San Jose works out to be just about the same 25 or 30 minutes. Uh Los Angeles works out to about an hour and a half an hour and 45 minutes.

Yeah. What about Passengers? How many passengers are we carrying from here to these other destinations with passenger numbers are really pretty phenomenal. If you go back just a couple of years to calendar year 1988. We had 44,000 annual passengers in round figures in calendar 89. That

number was a 113,000. And in the past 12 calendar months, that number has come to 100 and 37,000. So we're talking about some pretty phenomenal numbers. You go back to the early eighties, we're talking a passenger loads about 10,000 out of Sonoma County. So we've seen

some phenomenal increase at the airport. How long have you been the director of? Just? About 10 years now? About 10 years. A decade. Great deal has happened out there. You had, how many flights? Approximately 10,000. We're running about four flights a day of basically nine or

10 passenger aircraft and maybe 10,000 people a year? In the early eighties. So our world has changed dramatically. What about baggage, how much baggage we carry. How do you keep from losing your baggage? You always tell us that when you come in. Okay, well, first of

all, how much baggage that it actually is there a way you can count on? We really don't. We don't really count baggage. And the air freight that we have is is really not any real significant number. The baggage wise, that's always interesting thing because it seems

like everybody has a lost baggage story. But most baggage never really never really gets lost. It only gets misrouted. It's real unusual for somebody's bag to just completely disappear and never resurfaced. Most of the time they just missed connections and and they don't show up. So

you always like to remind people to be thinking ahead when they're making connections and give us those those Mementos that you gave us last time about things that they can do to avoid that. This is very important. Ladies and gentlemen, we all fly and periodically. I'm

sure we've all, as David said, had baggage missing. Now there are ways you can avoid that or be darn almost positive to avoid it. What are some of those things? I think, first of all, starting before you leave home, be sure that you have your your

name and address on the outside of the baggage, and I say and address, because sometimes it's better not to have your home address, Perhaps a business address on there, or telephone number you're going to be required to have that when you give the bag to the

airline. So I have that on there on a sturdy tag and then be sure that inside the bag your name and address is so that the bag ends up at the airport with the tag torn off of it on the outside. We can at least open

the suitcase up and find out who it belongs to. Then arrive at the airport in plenty of time. If you arrive at the airport at the last minute and run for the airplane, I can guarantee you that nobody's running for the airplane with your baggage and

if you don't allow adequate time, your baggage probably won't get on the airplane. We have the same problem with connections. You need to leave at least 45 minutes for connection. And a lot of times if connections are closer than that and make it real convenient for

you to run between airplanes. But again, I assure you that there's no one down in the basement of the terminal running between airplanes with your baggage and primarily that's how baggage guess misrouted simply misses the airplane because the connection time is too short and that may

be your fault that maybe the workers all because they're running late, it generally shows up on the next airplane. So it's not a real problem. Now, usually I've always got my baggage back been misrouted as you said probably due to my own carelessness in some cases.

But I've gotten it back. I mean, as you say, it's rare that piece of baggage is lost forever. But a real unusual for one just to completely disappear. But it can happen. David, you've been out there about 10 years. It's digress for a minute. The physical

plant itself has has improved a great deal, hasn't it? We'd like to think. So we spent something on the order of about a million dollars a year for half a dozen years or so, uh, enhancing the airport. And we've basically gone in and redone the runways

and taxiways. Everything that we use and particularly anything that's used by the air carriers, uh, has been completely redone to probably better than new. We put a porous friction code and anti skid code on the main runway to prevent the airplanes from hydro planing. We put

a a different kind, but again, an anti skid surface on the parallel runway. The crosswind runway. Uh, and we've redone the surfaces of all the taxiways. So we've done a tremendous amount improvement to the physical plant. It's probably better than new David, the Airport Enterprise Fund.

What are we talking about? Well, I think that's a real important thing about the airport is that the airport operates as a business, as a public business. It doesn't have any tax dollars going into it. The airport operates as a business. So we're expected to operate

the airport and pay the employees and maintain the physical plant with the money that we make from landing fees and fuel flow fees and tied down fees and hangar fees and so forth. And, and we do that most of the money that we use for construction,

who are talking these construction grants, Most of the money comes from the federal government through the aid to airport program. And that's money primarily comes from a tax on airline tickets. So the airline passions that are using the airport are paying a ticket tax. We get

that back through a rather complicated formula from the federal government and then we use that money to enhance the airport. So we're, we're not talking about the local taxpayers tax dollar. We're talking about the airport user that is the airline passenger paying the majority of that

money that comes back to us that way. There's a similar state program that's based on a fuel flow tax for aircraft. And so the people who are flying their own airplanes are paying that tax, that money is coming back to them back to us through them

and not from the general taxpayer. The state also has another program that we've been real fortunate to use it as a loan program that's generated by aviation user fees again, and were able to get loans at a very low rate to build revenue producing projects. And

we built, uh, off the top of my head, at least three hangar projects that pay a significant amounts of money from the state loans. Again, we're not using general taxpayersmoney, but airplane airport user fees. Well, when you say then the airport as an enterprise from operation

is similar to private business. It has to pay its own way. That's correct, basically. And this is what you do, that's what we endeavor to do. That's correct. And we've been successful so far. Yeah. And that means that and this is important, I think, to the

audience picking this up right now that tax dollars do not go into the operation of the airport. This is accomplished by these Federal grant program, state grant and the state loan sort of thing plus your own earnings out there and and all that money is generated

by, as I say, airline passengers or airport airplane owners or airport users. It's not general tax fund money. Let's digress. Just a moment again from things I had jotted down to ask him, but I want to go into it recently, developed an, an airport industrial park

type thing out there. Are you working with that at all or is that just surrounding, you know, the, the development that's been happening of late is all private development that's just happening. It just happens to be located adjacent to the airport. But it is, it's becoming

a very populated area out there by businesses as you come out to the airport boulevard. That's correct. It's really growing out there and the developers that are working out there have been doing a phenomenal job of really doing some really nice stuff. And so it's giving

us a really nice front door to the airport. Alright. As an enterprise fund. If you're operating like you say federal, state money and state loans plus your earnings, are you able to, you, you said you were are you able you're able to keep your head above

water and make up? Yes. In fact, we've we've been pretty successful that way. We have uh, some of the lowest hangar tie down fees and so forth around. We try and very carefully balance our income sources to to the user that is that you pay for

that portion of the airport that you use. And so we we've been able to keep the rates and fees Pretty low out there relative to other airports. David, you've read a lot of space to a lot of different planes. How many planes are stationed there hangar

there? Red space from you is about 450, is that right? 450. They must really tie that runway up periodically, don't they? Do you have a lot of problem with getting them all. We're getting in and out of the traffic getting heavy, bad or what? No, not

really. We're currently at about 100 and 50,000 annual takeoff and landings and giving the runway configuration that we currently have, we could go up to, I believe the numbers 375,000 landings before we reach the aeronautical equivalent of gridlock if you will. So while there are times

on on the weekends and particularly at eight o'clock in the morning and five o'clock in the evening, it can get three or four or five people lined up there. We're not talking about people taking delays of more than a few minutes really. When you talk about

that four or five back up like that, these people are they on business flights or they just pleasure flights or what do you have any idea? It's just a real combination of whoever happens to be out there at the time. The only people that would really

give priority are the air tankers when they're on fire, then they get priority and that can create a delay. Uh Most of the delays that that the air carriers take on this end have to do with congestion at san Francisco airport and not congestion at this

airport. Alright let's look into public safety services now If I'm correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the sheriff's helicopter unit is stationed out there, isn't it? That's correct. What is that consistent? Well the sheriff has a helicopter based at the airport and the helicopter

is available immediately available 10 hours a day, seven days a week and they have a pilot and a deputy uh in a paramedic available 10 hours a day, seven days a week immediately available. And then if you need it during the nighttime hours, understand it takes

anywhere from about 20 minutes to about an hour and a half to get airborne depending on the circumstances. So it is available 24 hours a day, but not immediately available 24 hours a day. Uh folks do a phenomenal job for us, uh primarily the sheriff works

in law enforcement and rescue and they, they're flying a lot, uh the exact numbers, but I had the exact numbers slips in mind. It's up several flights a day now on the average, they do law enforcement missions, not only for Sonoma County Sheriff, but for any

law enforcement agency in the county. So if anybody in the county needs the helicopter, the helicopter is immediately available to them, then the helicopter is also available for rescue work. So if we have somebody that's stranded in the water, somebody stranded on a cliff helicopters available

for that. But that, that chopper is basically for rescue purposes is that is that its primary rescue and law enforcement and law enforcement. I went flying with Wilkinson years ago, we were chasing a bandit down the river. It's quite exciting, very effective law enforcement tool. It

sure is seriously. We did, we, we were chasing someone that had escaped from the CHP Car that was being apprehended and we had to follow this person down the river, we were doing the helicopter and keeping the other law enforcement agencies surprised where the person was

going. So they could apprehending, which they did very shortly. But it's a it's a fascinating thing to follow along the river and keeping your eye on somebody who's trying to run away from the place fascinating. But they go to the coast a lot. I know and

rescue people from the surf and that sort of thing that they very reassuring to the deputies who are working in the field alone with backup. They had to drive can sometimes be a long way away and it's very reassuring to have a helicopter available so that

when you have a problem, you know that those folks are on the way and we'll be there within minutes. Well, we say the Sheriff's helicopter now, is that is that an actually correct terminology? Do they don't own the helicopter helicopter is least yes, but they have

their own people flying or not. I think at least the pilot too. But they have a deputy observer on board goes into that. All right, we're going to pause for just a moment and let the audience receive a special service announcement from the station And after

this announcement, Dave Andrew and I come back. We'll talk more about safety and more about Sonoma County Airport. First these messages, what would you do if your child ate a bottle of vitamins eight, the leaf of a poisonous plant or swallowed a potent prescription drug, learn

what to do in a poisoning accident, Call your poison center, wake up teachers, time to teach a new way. Maybe then the power of teaching. No, The power to wake up young minds, the power to wake up the world. Teachers have that power reach for the

power teach. I'm Edward James Olmos and we're recruiting new teachers. Call 1 845 teach. Welcome back to this edition of Sonoma County in the 90s. We're talking about the Sonoma County Airport services and surroundings and we're talking with the airport director actually, his title is director

of aviation. His name is Dave Andrews and Dave. When we left, we were talking about public safety services. We're talking about the sheriff's helicopter unit and the fact that it's used primarily for law enforcement and rescue. Now there's a Redwood Empire Air care helicopter. I think

they call it reach. What are we talking about here? What does it do? Well, the the helicopter is a medical helicopter and basically think of it as an advanced life support ambulance. Now, it's based at the airport immediately available 24 hours a day, seven days a

week for immediate response. Consequently, the airport is a good place to have a medical emergency because we have both the Sheriff and reach there immediately available paramedics for you. Reach has the two paramedics on board primarily their mission has been hospital hospital transport. So if someone

is injured and they need special care, uh reach helicopter and go and pick them up and transfer them to a hospital in this area or perhaps a hospital in the bay Area where they can get specialized treatment. Very, very important to speak of this, the golden

hour where someone has a traumatic injury. And if they can get to a properly equipped facility within an hour, their chances of survival are much greater than if the time goes beyond that. And I think you know what that would be in the case of a

burn or what. Uh Burns are a real, real good in case they run people down to the santa clara burn center, Another one is severed limbs. If someone loses arm, leg fingers, something like that and they need to transport them to the san Francisco area where

they can have that that reattached. That's real important. Trying to go down one oh one in, in in traffic would probably be three hours best case. Whereas with helicopter, you're probably talking less than 30 minutes. They were giving me an example the other day where they

came out of Lake County Uh and they're flying time from the hospital in Lake County Memorial something on the order of 18 minutes. So they do a phenomenal job. They also will go to the scene, if someone's injured in a remote area and it's gonna be

very difficult to transport them. Uh then they'll be able to land at the scene. So this can save a person a real bouncy ride in an ambulance and somebody with a critical neck or back injury. A long ride in a truck, An ambulance over a bumpy

road could compound that injury. The helicopter is able to go out and pick them up and give them a smooth, quick trip to the help they need. So the machine does a tremendous job for us who operates that. It's actually a private company. It is a

private company. All right now, there's one other uh helicopter operation, I think it is out there. That's California, Department of Forestry Air Attack Base. That is not the chopper or what is that? It is not a chopper. It is a normally, this time from about this

time of year to november. We have two airplanes there, there'll be twin engine airplanes, uh, Grumman s two military airplanes, uh, and they'll be available for immediate response to wildfires in Sonoma and the surrounding counties. And they also have an observation plane there that will go

out and will control the aircraft on the fire scene. That airplane acts like an air traffic control tower if you will at the fire scene. So we have our two uh, Airplanes that are immediately available. And then if they need extra airplanes will bring extra airplanes

from all around the state. In the extreme case was, we had 19 air tankers working from the airport on a single fire on a single day. So that gets to be pretty exciting phenomena too. So there's, there's three different things to share such a copper reach

helicopter and they and their air attack base, is that right? That's correct. Okay. How about the subject of residential growth in the airport area? We'll talk a little bit about that. Okay. We've had an interesting phenomenal last few years with the tremendous growth in residential development,

the Windsor area and lots and lots of new houses going in up there. We have several things and have had several things in place for a number of years. Back in the early eighties, we had the airport land use Commission policy plan and the airport land

use Commission policy plan is a land use planning tool around the airport that endeavors to protect the airport from incompatible development. Be sure that we don't get a single family residential primarily, or hospitals or schools in areas that would, would both be annoying. And that you

get overflight or noise or dangerous and that they'd be under a flight pattern away from the airport. Uh that that has been in place for some period of time. Uh We did an airport approach protection plan uh, back oh, and I guess in the mid eighties,

and that that document unfortunately, has been involved in some litigation is in still in draft form, but nevertheless outlined some of the problems, their problem areas and has allowed us to purchase some property that that was incompatible with the airport. And then we have the air

transportation element of the general plan, uh, but we still have primarily on the, on the east side of the freeway, in the Windsor area, a lot of development, uh, and that that's created some, some problems, primarily that a lot of folks buying into those houses did

not realize where they were relative to the airport. And it's not unusual to get a call from somebody who doesn't understand why they're being overflown. Uh, and they're very happy to very unhappy with the explanation, Discover that they are in fact under the traffic patterns existed

for about 50 years now. So what I like to tell people is, if if you're looking at houses, be very wary of that. We have a little real estate for sure that that we've made in response to the real estate community, they wanted to be sure

that they were all giving people the same information. And so we made a little brochure up. And basically that brochure tells you that, that you need to draw a five mile circle around the airport, If you're anywhere in that five mile circle, you're probably gonna be

overflown by aircraft at less than 1000 ft. And then that brochure also has the runways very carefully aligned on it because the concentration of the traffic is going to be along the extended center line of the runways. So I'd encourage anybody who's looking at property to

give us a call. I'll be glad to put one of those in the mail or stop by and we'll give you one and then you can, we put the major roadways on that map so that you can figure out we're going to be relative to the

airport. A lot of folks live in real close and uh, not only don't complain, but enjoy watching the airplanes, but a lot of folks are real sensitive to that and you need to know that before you buy the house. Well, that's been a problem I guess

throughout the west and certainly maybe the world, I don't know that p people, an airport will be located in a certain place. And then as development keeps occurring, it'll encroach closer and closer to it. And the first thing, you know, they are direct path. You can't

change the flight paths for planes coming in and out, can you? Well, no, that's that's exactly correct that if you, you have people who very carefully in terms of where they wanted to live to avoid the flight path. And if you were able to change the

flight path and I don't believe that's possible because it's federal jurisdiction, but you if you were able to change it and you change it over, people who very carefully looked to see that they weren't under one, then you create some additional problems. And I submit that

those people had pretty good luck lawsuit. They have a pretty good case there that you, this is like building a freeway right by somebody. Uh, clearly you need to compensate somebody if you do something like that, you know, as opposed to the person who may choose

to buy near the freeway and then discover the freeway annoying. Uh, so we've had some interesting problems there. They aren't overwhelming. The total number of noise complaints. We got a whole calendar year. Last year is just 170. Uh, so and about 31 of those are from

one individual and uh, about 100 there are only about 100 different people. So you balance that against 100 and 50,000 takeoffs and landings. It comes out on the order of one on one complaint every 900 take off and landing or so. So I don't think we

have an extreme problem out there by any means, but I think that we need to be sure that people are aware that if the airplanes are annoying to them, they need to be very careful about where they locate. Well, let's talk a little bit about the

future of the airport. Now, you people are constantly getting pressured. I know by business community or the county is to enlarge the airport and to make it a larger facility and that sort of thing. Is that going to happen. Well, basically the plans are not to

enlarge the physical plant. We're gonna stick with the runways and taxiways that we have, we spend a lot of money in the last few years, get everything up to like new and there's no plan to lengthen and strengthen runways for larger aircraft. But certainly the pressure

is there for the increased commercial service numbers I gave you at the beginning of the program. Pretty phenomenal growth. I think that's going to continue. Uh, so, but we're using on that service. We're using a very quiet airplanes that in fact, the newer airplanes that we

got the other day while they carry twice the passengers as the older ones are even quieter. So if we can continue to increase the number of passengers that we haul with these very quiet airplanes, I think we have the best of both worlds. We have the

convenience for the business community and we have the least amount of impact on the residential community. I'm a big believer in not bigger airplanes, but more frequent flights. I think you're much better off to have 16 flights a day. 30 passenger airplanes and say three or

four of 90 passenger airplanes. It's more convenient for people because they have the flexibility. They tend to use the service more. We've certainly seen that as the number of flights increased the number of passengers using, it has increased dramatically. And I relate that to the convenience.

You're not going to have to sit somewhere for four or five hours if you finish your business day early and you're not gonna be stranded if you, if you miss your flight. Uh, basically, uh, there's something in out of the county airport about every hour, all

day during the daylight hours if you will. So it provides a person with a lot of flexibility and therefore they use the service. Well, you said you're about 150,000 takeoffs and landings. Now you could go up to 375,000 before you reach gridlock, which means you wouldn't

want to go quite that far, but, but you still have a lot of room to grow. In other words, as you're saying, a lot more takeoff and landings than we presently have without, without getting into real trouble. Right. We're projecting to go to 256,000 by the

year 2005, which is our current planning horizon. And so basically for every airplane, you see today, you'd see less than one additional airplane, uh, about what, 15 years down the line. So we're not looking at any, any phenomenal growth. And certainly the trend in airplanes and

they get quieter and quieter and quieter than the new technology turboprops and even jets are just phenomenal. They're really quiet machines. What about the future and the future number of operations. What 356. That's correct. What type of aircraft are we talking about? Maybe, let's say the

biggest, we're talking about, the biggest are talking about it would be £95,000. And and the only thing that will fit in that category is the 146 that we were using in the last year. Uh, the runway length and the runway strength includes the operation of Dc

97 27 7 37 type aircraft. So we're not gonna see that type of aircraft in commercial service at the airport. Uh, we're unless we lengthen and strengthen the runways and and that would take a tremendous environmental process. And in this county, I don't think that's gonna

happen. All right. We've got about 30 seconds. How about any commercial air service destinations that we're going to include more of those? Are we gonna improve? No, I think that we have, the only thing that possibly will come up on the horizon is Oakland, Oakland starting

to get some pretty good service and we can get, we can get commuter service to Oakland anytime. Okay, Now you keep yourself in the bay and so you can come back and tell us sometime soon about what's happening out there. Would like to have you in

here once in a while and find out what's happening out there. Ladies and gentlemen, we're talking to David Andrew the director of aviation for the Sonoma County Airport referred to him as our airport director. We've been talking about the airport and its growth and what's happening

there now. And what's probably going to happen. My name is Richmond trinity. The program is Sonoma County in the nineties. I'll be back with you next week for another member of the county government family. Until then. Good night, good luck and good health for each and

every one.