Sonoma County airport finishes 2022 beating pre-pandemic record passenger numbers
As expected, Sonoma County’s airport ended 2022 having flown more passengers than ever before, surpassing 600,000 for the first time — and shattering the pre-pandemic record by 25% — as business and leisure travel supported a new flight to Southern California and a longer seasonal run for the hub’s lone Texas route.
The final tally at Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport: 614,481 passengers, airport officials said, with the previous record set at 488,179 flown in 2019.
“Compared to a lot of smaller airports (last) year, we had an exceptional year,” Airport Manager Jon Stout said.
The new mark reflects continued growth after the pandemic decimated air traffic through 2020, when passenger numbers dropped to 195,303. The following year saw a major rebound, to 435,427 passengers.
That trendline, plus moves by carriers and facility upgrades, mean the regional airport has entered 2023 on strong footing, Stout said.
American Airlines, which runs its Dallas flights out of the regional airport on a seasonal basis — typically pausing around Thanksgiving before resuming in early spring — has shortened the downtime this season because of consistent demand, Stout said.
“Dallas starts again on Feb. 3, so they’re bringing that back almost two months early,” he said. “We’re very excited to see them coming back so much earlier.”
More good news comes from Avelo Airlines. It debuted its seasonal service to Palm Springs on Nov. 11, with initial plans to pause in March.
“It has been doing well and they’ve already extended it through the end of June,” Stout said.
Although it’s early in 2023, Stout said he expects the airport this year will do at least as well as 2022.
On the construction side, airport officials on Jan. 31 will go in front of the county’s Board of Supervisors to ask for additional funding, Stout said. Although the amount can’t be disclosed ahead of the meeting, he said it will be millions of dollars.
The reasons are many — construction delays, costs that have ballooned since the project began and other unforeseen issues, including a newly discovered sinkhole in front of the building. That also means the project completion date will be pushed back from the end of March until May, Stout said.
Drilling down to the passenger numbers for December, the three commercial air carriers serving the airport in December — Alaska Airlines, American Airlines and Avelo Airlines — collectively flew 44,717 passengers through the facility. That was down 0.5% from a year earlier and below the 52,360 passengers flown in November.
Alaska Airlines, the dominant carrier, in December flew 28,786 passengers, up 5.4% from a year earlier. Its load factor — the measure of how full airplanes are on average — was 84%.
American Airlines last month flew 5,505 passengers through Santa Rosa — 41.5% more than December 2021. Its load factor was 73%.
Avelo, which flies from Santa Rosa to its Burbank hub, as well as Las Vegas and Palm Springs, in December flew 10,426 passengers through the Sonoma County airport, down 13.5% from December 2021. Avelo’s load factor was 79%.
Stout explained that even though the total number of passengers flown in December was lower than in November, it was still higher than the flight schedule reflected for December. That is why the final passenger count for 2022 outdid his expectation.
Cheryl Sarfaty covers tourism, hospitality, health care and employment. She previously worked for a Gannett daily newspaper in New Jersey and NJBIZ, the state’s business journal. Cheryl has freelanced for business journals in Sacramento, Silicon Valley, San Francisco and Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from California State University, Northridge. Reach her at cheryl.sarfaty@busjrnl.com or 707-521-4259.
