Sonoma County airport records all-time low monthly passenger total in April

Sonoma County’s airport recorded its lowest-ever monthly passenger total in April, as the coronavirus pandemic caused airlines to cut flights because all but essential travel stopped.

Just over 1,400 travelers passed through Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport last month, an average of 47 passengers per day. The total was a staggering 93% decline from March, and a 96% drop compared to the same time last year.

“Looking at the whole industry, it’s been a 90%-to-95% dip in passenger volume, so this was not unexpected,” Sonoma County Airport Manager Jon Stout said. “It does show that people are abiding by shelter in place and weren’t traveling. Yes, there’s a fair number of medical people traveling, and certain essential work where people still travel such as government, construction and some support services, but the numbers for that are still very low.”

Nearly 20,000 passengers traveled through the airport in March, most before local and statewide stay-at-home orders began in the second half of the month. Even that monthly figure represented a 40% decline year-over-year.

In 2019, the airport set an all-time high of more than 488,000 passengers, an average of more than 1,300 people flying in and out of Santa Rosa daily. With new nonstop routes to Denver and Dallas-Fort Worth, plus more flights to existing West Coast destinations, airport officials were planning to offer as many as 19 flights a day in 2020, and to surpass for the first the 500,000 mark for annual passengers.

But the pandemic put a halt to that growth. The airport’s three main carriers have gone to minimal schedules, with as few as two daily inbound and outbound flights altogether.

The airport, however, remains on track to overhaul its 1960s-era terminal to better accommodate passengers when they eventually return with regularity to commercial flights. The $30 million project is slated to be finished in early 2022, and will benefit from more than $23 million in federal capital grant funding, leaving the county to pick up less than a quarter of the tab, Stout said.

“We still need the space,” he said of the 30,000-square-foot expansion. “People will fly again. We just don’t know when it will be back to normal, and the terminal is still very constrained.”

For now, construction crews are making progress on an almost $4 million upgrade of the airport’s tented passenger area. Due to the lack of flight traffic, the contractor has been able to expedite work on the project to relocate the security checkpoint and add permanent bathrooms outside the terminal, and now expects to finish by early August, Stout said.

Almost $19.7 million more in U.S. aid will help pay the airport’s staffing, daily operations and minor maintenance costs through at least summer 2022. The county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted unanimously to accept the federal grant dollars.

Alaska Airlines continues to fly from Santa Rosa to Seattle, Los Angeles and San Diego. United Airlines has maintained its route to San Francisco - the shortest flight in its network - but has shifted to a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule.

American Airlines last month reestablished its direct route to Dallas-Fort Worth while dropping one of its two daily trips to Phoenix. The airline also is considering suspending the daily flight to Dallas-Fort Worth in early June before restoring it in early July, Stout said.

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin Fixler at 707-521-5336 or kevin.fixler@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @kfixler.