FAA airport operations counts for STS, 1990–2025

The FAA's interface does not produce a durable result URL, so there is no link that reproduces this report. Anyone checking these figures must re-run the query. The specification below is complete enough to do that.

How the data were retrieved

The FAA's ATADS Airport Operations report was queried on August 25, 2026 for Charles M. Schulz – Sonoma County Airport, using these selections:

• Dates: Calendar years 1990 through 2025
• Facility: STS – Santa Rosa Sonoma County
• Grouping: Date
• Display: Standard Report
• Show itinerant operations: Yes
• Show local operations: Yes
• Format: HTML

The report returned one row for each calendar year. No projected or partial-year figures were added. Calendar year 2026 was excluded because it was incomplete when the data were retrieved.

ATADS makes the previous month's data available on the 20th of each month, and the FAA notes that some data are subject to change. A report run later than the date above may differ from this one.

The figures

Column headings follow the FAA's own report. Itinerant and local subtotals, and the grand total, are the FAA's; they are shown in bold. Every row has been checked to confirm the categories sum to the subtotals and the subtotals to the total. The series is complete: thirty-six consecutive calendar years, with no missing years and no suppressed values.

The same figures, charted

The chart below plots the table above. Because the categories differ greatly in size — Air Carrier operations are counted in thousands, General Aviation in tens of thousands — the values are indexed rather than shown directly: each series is set to 100 in the chosen year, so the four can be compared on one scale. An index of 150 means half as many operations again as in the index year; an index of 50 means half as many.

Changing the index year changes every figure on the chart. Any statement about growth or decline in these counts depends on which year it is measured from, and the control makes that dependence visible.

Two cautions the chart states for itself where they apply. Air Carrier operations were near zero from 1991 to 2006, so an index built on one of those years divides by a very small number and produces figures that are arithmetically correct and practically meaningless. Three of those years recorded no Air Carrier operations at all, against which an index cannot be calculated.

The chart is derived from the table above. Where the two appear to disagree, the table is the record.

What an operation is

An operation is one arrival or one departure. An aircraft that lands and later leaves counts twice. Overflights — aircraft that pass through the tower's airspace without landing — are not included in these airport totals.

Itinerant and local

Itinerant operations are those where an aircraft arrives from outside the airport area, or departs and leaves it.

Local operations are those where the aircraft remains in the traffic pattern, flies simulated instrument approaches or low passes at the airport, or operates to or from the same airport within a designated practice area inside a 20-mile radius of the tower.

The two are counted differently, and the local count in particular is not a count of aircraft. Under FAA Order JO 7210.3EE, paragraph 13-3-1, a stop-and-go or touch-and-go below traffic pattern altitude is recorded as two counts, and an aircraft leaving for a designated practice area and returning is recorded as one count each way. A single training flight of ten circuits therefore produces about twenty local operations. Dividing a local figure by two does not yield a number of aircraft.

The four categories, and two definitions of them

Itinerant operations are sorted into Air Carrier, Air Taxi, General Aviation, and Military. Local operations are sorted only into Civil and Military.

The FAA defines the first three categories in two places, and the two definitions apply different tests.

By aircraft size. The ASPMHelp glossary for OPSNET reports defines Air Carrier as aircraft with more than 60 seats, or a maximum payload above 18,000 pounds, carrying passengers or cargo for hire or compensation. Air Taxi covers aircraft at or below those thresholds, also for hire. General Aviation covers all other civil takeoffs and landings.

By operator. FAA Order JO 7210.3EE, paragraph 13-1-5, which instructs facilities on how to record each operation, defines Air Carrier as operations by aircraft identified at Appendix 3 of that order, which use three-letter company designators. Air Taxi covers aircraft not on that list which use three-letter designators or the prefixes "T" or "L". General Aviation is again everything civil that remains.

One test asks how large the aircraft is. The other asks which list its operator appears on. The report does not record which test produced these figures.

Two consequences follow for anyone using this data.

"Air Carrier" is not a synonym for commercial flying. Air Taxi operations also carry passengers or cargo for hire, and they appear in a separate column. A figure for commercial activity at the airport cannot be read off the Air Carrier column alone.

Neither is "Air Carrier" equivalent to categories used in airport planning documents. The 2011 Master Plan environmental review, for example, forecast "commercial operations" as mainline and regional service combined, and that grouping does not map onto any single ATADS column. No reconciliation between the two has been established.

The local Civil category is broader than it appears. Under paragraph 13-1-5 it covers all civilian operations, including local flights by air carrier and air taxi aircraft, so it is not a count of light-aircraft flying.

Limits of this series

The series begins where the FAA's data begins, not where the airport's history does. ATADS holds data from fiscal year 1990. The airport operated long before that. Nothing here indicates what activity looked like earlier, and 1990 should not be treated as a baseline or a starting condition. It is the edge of the record.

1990 is also the highest year in the series. Any change measured from 1990 is measured from the maximum. Comparisons between period averages are less sensitive to that than comparisons between single years.

Air Carrier counts are near zero from 1991 to 2006. Every year in that span records fewer than fifty, and three record none. Air Taxi operations continued throughout at between roughly 4,500 and 11,000 a year. What the record shows is a near-empty Air Carrier column, not an absence of flying for hire. Why the column is near-empty in those years, and why 1990 records 439 while 1991 records 8, is not explained anywhere in this data.

Counting method affects precision. FAA Order JO 7210.3EE, paragraph 13-1-2, allows counts to be produced manually or through automated counting programs, and requires the accuracy of automated counts to be validated annually to within plus or minus 3 percent of the actual traffic count. This report does not state which method produced the STS figures. Differences between years smaller than that tolerance should not be treated as measured changes.

The counts show what happened, not why. Nothing in this data establishes a cause for any movement in any column.

Sources

Federal Aviation Administration, Air Traffic Activity Data System (ATADS), Airport Operations Standard Report, Facility STS, January 1990 – December 2025, retrieved from aspm.faa.gov/opsnet.

Federal Aviation Administration, ASPMHelp, "OPSNET Reports: Definitions of Variables." https://www.aspm.faa.gov/aspmhelp/index/OPSNET_Reports__Definitions_of_Variables.html

Federal Aviation Administration, Order JO 7210.3EE, Facility Operation and Administration, Chapter 13, Section 1, "General Information," paragraphs 13-1-2 and 13-1-5, and Section 3, "Local Operations," paragraph 13-3-1. https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/foa_html/chap13_section_1.html