And there’s just not enough population here to warrant additional airlines. Marin/Sonoma/Lake/Mendocino/Napa Counties are basically rural in composition and not densely populated like most of the Bay Area south of here. In all counties combined the population is less than a million and that’s across a very broad area. As an example, Alameda County is less than half the size of Sonoma County but has more than three times the population and of course more population than all the surrounding counties combined.

And I personally don’t see the big headache going to OAK or SFO. I get on the Sonoma Airport Express every time I go to SFO and it’s a stress-free 1-1.5 hours in the bus down there and relatively cheap for the convenience of it. Is it super-convenient to be able to go to a small, easily-accessible local airport that doesn’t have nearly the same headaches of a huge airport like SFO? Of course. But the cost of that convenience is very, very high, for the airlines and therefore the residents so we have to balance our desire for more services and routes with the reality that they probably can’t be cost-justified by the airlines.

Santa Rosa is a small town and for those who have lived here our entire lives, it is a great place to raise a family. It would be a shame to have all the bells and whistle of a larger city and also have their problems