California Airports

NBAA: FAA Should Block City’s Latest Request To Dismiss The Part 16 Petition

On Aug. 28, NBAA and several other parties joined in calling upon the FAA to deny the latest move by the city of Santa Monica to side-step grant-assurance obligations involved with the operation of embattled Santa Monica Municipal Airport (KSMO).

September 1, 2014
When the largest quake to hit Northern California since 1989 struck just south of Napa in the early morning of Aug. 24, its epicenter was less than 2 miles from Napa County Airport (APC), but the airfield stayed open and provided a critical staging area for disaster response.

“It was a busy weekend, and the ramp and hangars were full, but we had triple-chocked the aircraft and luckily none moved or sustained damage,” said Mark Willey, CEO of Napa Jet Center, the FBO on the airfield. “Everyone, including our charter flights, was able to fly out on schedule.”

The fuel farm, which is above ground, never lost power, and the FBO offices and the terminal were quickly running off backup generators, he reported to the National Business Aviation Association.

If you ever wondered what the movie might be like about the last day at Santa Monica Airport, here’s a preview.

The movie’s “opening” is Sunday August 31, 2014.

Its closing is this Sunday, too.

A movie cut short. A story that’s long. A story that’s sad.

Rialto / L67 will be closed and gone after Sunday, August 31st. And it could be duplicated at Santa Monica if we don’t get further organized, more money raised, and this initiative passed.

Palm Desert has become the first valley city to signal its interest in at least exploring the possibility of partnering with other local governments as a way to continue operations at the Bermuda Dunes Airport.

Without committing to play a part in the privately owned airport’s future, members of the Palm Desert City Council voted 4-1 on Thursday, with Councilman Bob Spiegel dissenting, to look into what a joint-management agreement could look like.

The city of San Luis Obispo and the commission that drafts the safety plans for the San Luis Obispo County Regional Airport are going to head-to-head over future development in the city.

The City Council this week took the first step to overrule the Airport Land Use Commission’s decision that the city’s update of its general plan, or its blueprint for growth, is inconsistent with the airport’s safety plan.

That plan, in place for more than 40 years, determines what type of development can occur around the airport, taking into account both safety and noise impacts and to protect the airport from development that would hinder its future operations.

Clean-up is still underway in the wake of the 6.0 magnitude earthquake that shook the Bay Area early Sunday morning, causing at least two hundred injuries, power outages for thousands of customers and damage to many buildings, the Mercury News reports.

In a tweet, officials at the Port of Oakland reported that the South Napa Earthquake (it already has a name), which had its epicenter about 9 miles south of Napa, did no damage to the Oakland International Airport.

But damage was sustained at the Napa County Airport.

Passenger traffic at the Fresno Yosemite International Airport increased by 4.3 percent in the first half of 2014 over the year before, beating out the national growth rate of just under 1 percent.

A total of 704,070 passengers flew in and out of Fresno in the first six months of the year compared to 675,044 during the same period in 2013.

The airport attributed the increase to additional flights from existing carriers like Frontier Airlines going from three flights a week to four.

Supporters of closing Santa Monica Airport lose round in court – In a setback for opponents of Santa Monica Airport, a Los Angeles judge has

dismissed a lawsuit that challenged a November ballot measure to protect the facility from closure..

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Luis A. Lavin threw out the case filed in May by an anti-airport group that claimed Measure D was misleading, poorly vetted by city officials and violated the state Constitution and elections code.

A deal to transfer Palo Alto Airport from Santa Clara County to the city has all but been cleared for take off.

As midnight approached Monday, the Palo Alto City Council unanimously approved a complex set of documents that would place the city in control of the airport, known as PAO. The State Lands Commission and the Federal Aviation Administration still need to weigh in on the deal.

“This is an outcome that we’ve had strong interest in for some time,” said Councilwoman Gail Price.

The county has operated the airport on land leased from the city since 1967. In 2006, the county announced it wasn’t interested in continuing the arrangement past the lease’s expiration in 2017.

Editorial: Mather Airport master plan charts a reasonable path 

The future of Mather Airport is a balancing act – between priming an important economic engine and preserving peace and quiet for residents, between doing what’s best for Mather and what’s best for Sacramento International Airport.

The Mather master plan endorsed by Sacramento County supervisors Tuesday isn’t perfect, but it gets close to striking the right balance. And as was made clear repeatedly, the specific projects to bring the airport up to current aviation standards – a runway extension, new hangars and others – would have to be approved separately.