The FAA alleges a California airport let passenger flights go without required fire crews

Two passenger flights moved through Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport in March 2025, and the FAA alleges the airport did not have the rescue and firefighting personnel and vehicles its federal certification required while they did. On Thursday, Nov. 12, the agency proposed a $170,000 civil penalty. A proposal is where the enforcement process starts, not where it ends.

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The FAA says the airport also failed to tell the airline that coverage was lacking. For one of the two flights, the agency alleges, nobody inspected the runways for deer and other wildlife before the first flight of the day. The airport has 30 days after receiving the FAA’s notice to respond, and the agency’s announcement quotes no airport official and names no FAA spokesperson.

The two alleged lapses behind the $170,000

The FAA’s announcement describes two separate duties. The first is aircraft rescue and firefighting coverage, which the agency says the airport’s FAA-approved Airport Certification Manual required for the two March 2025 passenger flights, along with notice to the airline when coverage fell short. The second is a wildlife inspection that the airport’s FAA-approved wildlife hazard management plan required before the first flight of the day. The FAA’s text spells the airport’s name “Schultz”; the county and local press use “Schulz.”

The release leaves out regulation section numbers and refers only to the two approved documents. It also does not say how the $170,000 figure was calculated or which airline operated the flights, and it labels every violation as alleged.

The wildlife count matters because deer on a runway are a collision risk for any aircraft rolling out of the first departure of the day. The wildlife hazard management plan is the document that spells out how often and when an airport checks for animals. A skipped check against that plan is a paperwork violation on its face, and the FAA treats it as grounds for money, even though the release reports no animal strike and no injury on either flight.

Rescue-and-firefighting coverage under Part 139

Federal rules explain why coverage is tied to flights. Under 14 CFR 139.319, an airport holding a Part 139 certificate must provide, during air carrier operations, at least the rescue and firefighting capability set by its index, a rating based on aircraft length and daily departures. At least one vehicle must reach the midpoint of the farthest air carrier runway and begin applying agent within three minutes of an alarm, and the remaining required vehicles must follow within four minutes.

Staffing has its own requirements: enough trained personnel to operate the vehicles, meet response times and hit agent discharge rates, plus at least one person with current basic emergency medical training of at least 40 hours. If a required vehicle goes out of service, the airport must notify the FAA’s regional airports division manager and each air carrier, and if the required capability is not restored within 48 hours it must limit operations to what the remaining equipment supports.

The FAA has pursued comparable cases before. On Dec. 20, 2021, it proposed a $167,343 penalty against the City of Dayton, Ohio, alleging that seven flights on Feb. 13, 2020, arrived and departed without adequate rescue and firefighting vehicles in service, and that the city failed to notify the FAA and air carriers of the shortage. That case, too, gave the city 30 days to respond, and the two proposals land within a few thousand dollars of each other, which suggests the agency prices this type of lapse in a consistent range.

A staffing debate that predates the penalty

Sonoma County’s airport has been arguing about emergency staffing for years. KQED reported in October 2024 that the FAA ran a surprise test at the airport in August of that year after whistleblowers raised concerns, that airport safety staff failed a three-minute emergency drill, and that inspectors also found inadequate equipment on the fire trucks and an outdated emergency plan. County supervisors voted unanimously to hire two more operations specialists, at roughly $300,000 a year, to add to a team of eight. Supervisor James Gore called for more collaboration, transparency and oversight.

Earlier that year, the Press Democrat, republished by Firehouse, reported that those operations specialists, not firefighters, provided the airport’s rescue and firefighting service. Airport manager Jon Stout said the staff were not emergency medical technicians or paramedics, even as rising passenger volume brought more medical calls. The plan described then was to station Sonoma County Fire District firefighters at the existing firehouse starting in 2025, with a full takeover years away and dependent on a new station estimated at $14 million to $17 million.

Nothing in the FAA’s Nov. 12 announcement ties the March 2025 flights to those earlier episodes, and the agency has not said whether coverage has since changed. What remains to be seen is the airport’s answer within the 30-day window and whether the FAA keeps the $170,000 figure.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.