Humboldt County Airport Improvement Feasibility on the Table at Supervisors Meeting

Aug. 8—On Tuesday, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors received a report on the feasibility of significant improvements to the only local commercial travel airport.

The improvements — not to be confused with this month's impending closure for other infrastructural upgrades such as new milling and paving — center around a system that would allow planes to better access the runway during times of low visibility: a common occurrence on the foggy North Coast. The specific upgrade is called an Instrument Landing System Category II.

"What we're looking at with this feasibility study is, first and foremost, this is an airport and there are people both on the airplane (and) on the ground that we need to protect their safety at all times and having a better instrument approach system that gets the aircraft automatically, with automatic guidance, closer to the runway really enhances that safety posture of the airport for both aircraft and for the Coast Guard and their helicopters that fly a modified version of this approach today on the same equipment," Paul Hannah, Lean Engineering's chief flight operations manager, said.

Lean Engineering is a subcontractor with Armstrong Consultants, Inc, the organization the county entered into a professional services agreement with for the feasibility study.

Hannah noted the airport in Arcata — built during World War II specifically to train U.S. Navy and Coast Guard pilots for foggy flying — sees delays and diversions because of the weather, but also because of SFO, according to Cody Roggatz, Humboldt County's director of aviation.

"As we brought on LAX and Denver, with United's offerings at ACV, with their direct flights, our performance characteristics, our on-time performance, and our cancellation rates have improved because not everything is going to and from SFO, so the majority of our past struggles that we've had, have been related to SFO," Roggatz said.

While a specific cost for the upgrades has not been identified, Hannah noted the county could see the funds completely paid for by the Federal Aviation Administration.

The airport's instrument landing system is currently at category one, which can let flights land with half-mile visibility, but if the visible distance is further reduced, the plane must find another airport.

Despite the airport's reputation for fog-related delays, diversions and cancellations, Roggatz said it deserves more credit.

"Our performance is right on par with the national average. But we're looking to improve that performance and also the public's perception, which is often a little bit different than what the actual performance statistics show," Roggatz said.

As the item was just a report, the supervisors did not take any action on the item.

The airport will be closed Aug. 14 through Aug. 25 for construction.

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