Departure
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MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport (KSTS) lies in the Santa Rosa Valley of California's Wine Country, some seven miles northwest of downtown Santa Rosa. Named for the Peanuts cartoonist who lived locally for over three decades, it began life as a World War Two fighter-training field and today combines scheduled airline service with a busy general aviation operation, making it a useful and characterful destination for the VFR simulator pilot.
KSTS is a county-owned airport serving Sonoma County, California, roughly seven miles northwest of downtown Santa Rosa. It carries the name of cartoonist Charles M. Schulz, long-time local resident and creator of Peanuts, whose Snoopy character appears in the airport's branding. The field mixes airline, corporate and general aviation traffic on an intersecting two-runway layout, and its wartime origins as a fighter training base give it a history that will interest sim pilots as much as its present-day mix of operations.
The airport sits in the Santa Rosa Valley, which runs on a southeast-to-northwest alignment, a few miles northwest of the city of Santa Rosa in Sonoma County, California. Traffic is worked by Santa Rosa Tower on the ground and by NORCAL Approach/Departure once airborne, indicating that the field operates within controlled airspace with an active air traffic control tower.
KSTS has two physical runways crossing each other. Runway 14/32 is 5,991 feet long, hard-surfaced and lit, with an ILS serving runway 32. Runway 02/20 is 5,191 feet long, also hard-surfaced and lit. Field elevation is 118 feet.
Santa Rosa Tower provides the control service on 118.5 MHz, which also serves as the CTAF. Ground movements are handled on 121.9 MHz, and the ATIS broadcasts on 120.55 MHz. UNICOM is available on 122.95 MHz. Pilots transiting to or from the wider Bay Area system should expect to work NORCAL Approach/Departure on 127.8 MHz. An ILS is available for runway 32.
The airfield's runway configuration consists of intersecting runways 14/32 and 02/20, with most general aviation services located on the east side of the field. A notable local procedure is that small piston aircraft are taxied only as far as the North run-up area rather than being cleared directly to the departure runway; pilots must obtain a further clearance before leaving the run-up area for their runway assignment. Because the Santa Rosa Valley runs southeast to northwest, pilots reporting inbound from the south or the north should take care, as the two directions can be easily confused and this affects pattern entry. All runway, run-up area, and hold-short instructions must be read back. Aircraft remaining in the pattern can expect to continue in closed traffic on the west side of the airport (https://www.faa.gov/flight_deck/sts).
The most useful visual reference for orientation is the Santa Rosa Valley itself, which is aligned southeast to northwest; pilots inbound from the south or the north should be alert to this orientation when planning their approach and pattern entry, as it can otherwise cause confusion about their true position relative to the field (https://www.faa.gov/flight_deck/sts).
The present airport traces its origins to a smaller municipal field with a 3,000-foot sod runway that existed near the Redwood Highway southeast of the current site during the 1930s. The current airport opened in June 1942 as Santa Rosa Army Air Field, assigned to Fourth Air Force as a group and replacement training airfield. Successive fighter groups trained there, including the 354th, 357th, 363d and 367th Fighter Groups during 1943, before the 478th Fighter Group was permanently assigned in December 1943 to train replacement pilots destined for overseas combat units. The airfield was inactivated on 31 January 1946 and passed to the War Assets Administration before returning to county ownership in mid-1946, with the first commercial flight taking off in March 1947. From the late 1940s into the mid-1970s the airport saw scheduled airline service from Southwest Airways and its successors Pacific Air Lines, Air West and Hughes Airwest, initially with Douglas DC-3s and later Fairchild F-27 turboprops, mainly linking Santa Rosa with San Francisco. A succession of commuter carriers followed, including Golden Pacific Airlines, Eureka Aero, Air Pacific, Westates Airlines, American Eagle operated by Wings West, and United Express operated by WestAir and later SkyWest, flying a variety of turboprop types. On 15 September 1974 the airport's main taxi runway was named after local pilot and businessman Lloyd C. Hayes, an unusual instance of a taxiway being formally named for an individual. Jet service arrived relatively late, with WestAir flying BAe 146-200s as United Express from 1989, followed decades later by Allegiant Air in 2016 and American Eagle in 2017. The airport was renamed in 2000 to honour Charles M. Schulz, the Peanuts cartoonist who had lived in Santa Rosa for more than thirty years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_M._Schulz%E2%80%93Sonoma_County_Airport, https://www.ktvu.com/news/southwest-charles-m-schulz-sonoma-county-airport).
KSTS is described as the only airport offering scheduled air service into California's North Bay region, and it now hosts a growing roster of airline operations alongside its general aviation traffic, including recently added and expanding services from carriers such as Southwest and Avelo. General aviation activity, including most based aircraft services, is concentrated on the east side of the airfield, while the crossing runway layout and specific local taxi procedures reflect its continued heavy use by piston GA traffic alongside airline and corporate operations (https://sonomacountyairport.org/, https://www.faa.gov/flight_deck/sts).