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The Livermore Airport Commission held its last meeting of the year Monday afternoon, where the group welcomed new air traffic control tower manager Paul Griffiths and received reports of airport operations, noise complaints and highlights from the past year.
Before joining the Livermore Municipal Airport, Griffiths was a frontline manager at the Monterey Regional Airport. He shared some details of his background with the commission during the meeting.
“I’m certainly happy to be here and I will continue the safety protocols that our air traffic organization performs. I certainly have a long history of being an air traffic controller, a trainer, a supervisor, manager and of course, here I am now as the Livermore air traffic control manager,” Griffiths said.
“I’m very receptive to any feedback or anything that we can do as a community player in the safe movement of air traffic in and around Livermore,” he added.
Following Griffiths’ introduction, airport manager Sean Moran presented a report on airport activity operations and noise complaints from the month of October.
The report compared the amount of operations and complaints to the previous month’s numbers as well as the numbers from the same month last year.
Moran said there were 14,894 operations for the month of October, a decrease of about 13% from the 17,185 operations reported for September.
However, operations were slightly higher for October of this year compared to the 14,537 operations in October 2020.
Fuel numbers were up by about 2% for the month from 87,613 total gallons pumped in September to 90,235 gallons pumped in October.
The total number of gallons for this past October was up by about 11% from the 80,653 gallons pumped in October 2020.
The number of based aircraft was steady at 477 for the month and only slightly down from the 483 reported for October 2020.
According to Moran’s report, the airport received a total of 472 noise complaints for the month of October, an increase of 18% from the previous month.
Of those complaints, 362 of them came from Pleasanton, 96 from Livermore and 14 from Dublin and other surrounding communities.
Moran said that 72 of the total complaints were received as a result of airport operations that occurred between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.
The report also indicated that multiple complaints came from the same households. Of Livermore’s 96 complaints, 25 of them came from two households.
In Pleasanton, 148 of the total 362 complaints were from two households and of the 14 Dublin complaints, 10 of them came from two households.
Regarding complaints received due to nighttime operations, Commission Chair Adam Bertsch asked Moran if the amount of operations that occurred between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. for the month were available to review as those operations are likely to trigger multiple complaints.
While Moran said he did not have that figure on hand, it could be researched and included in future reports. Bertsch noted that the additional information could be helpful in reaching out directly to some of the operators and letting them know exactly what impact they’re having on the surrounding communities.
“We’ve spoken at some past meetings about organizing a bit more open communication around these complaints — that’s moving slowly — but more information helps us to organize that better,” Bertsch said.
To close out the meeting on an uplifting note, Moran’s last report was an overview of highlights from the calendar year for the airport.
A $150,000 grant from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) helped the airport implement a pavement management program for all pavement areas on the field, including runways, taxiways and parking aprons, according to Moran.
He said the airport was also able to return to full staffing levels this year as a result of continued progress made through public health measures such as vaccinations against COVID-19, accessibility to testing and decreased COVID-19 cases.
“We were able to go back to the traditional full level of service that our airport was able to provide pre-pandemic,” Moran said, also acknowledging the work and dedication of the airport staff, the city’s public works department and the city attorney’s office.
Moran also shared in his report that Five Rivers Aviation — which provides hangars and other support facilities to the airport — is nearing completion of the second phase of its new full service fixed base operator (FBO) at the airport. When the FBO is complete, it will provide 45,000 square feet of additional hangar space for aircraft storage, which Moran said is “desperately needed in the San Francisco Bay Area region.”
“Hangar space is at a premium for a lot of our airports — both commercial service as well as general aviation airports such as ours,” Moran said, adding that the additional storage also offers an economic advantage in terms of revenue from increased property tax for aircraft stored there.
Five Rivers Aviation also represented the Livermore airport and Tri-Valley region at the National Business Aviation Association Convention held in Las Vegas, Nevada, in October, according to Moran.
In addition to the Five Rivers Aviation updates, Moran called attention to grant-funded infrastructure improvements to the Alameda County Sheriff’s Air Squadron based fleet at the airport, which includes a helicopter and two fixed-wing aircrafts.
Another highlight from the report is that businesses at the airport are making significant progress in recovering from pandemic impacts, particularly the flight schools which Moran said have seen an uptick in students taking advantage of opportunities to fly.
At the end of his report, Moran shared an optimistic outlook for the year ahead.
“We are coming out of this after two years and I’m confident and hopeful that as we enter into the year 2022, we will be able to see continued economic recovery and continued vitality for our airport as we showcase ourselves as an important asset to this region,” he said, adding that he is also hopeful that the airport will be able to host an open house next fall.
The Airport Commission will continue to hold its meetings virtually in the new year. The next regular meeting is set for Jan. 10 at noon.
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Would you be so kind as to please post the link for online public viewing of the January 10th Airport Commission Regular Meeting.
Thank you
Regarding most of the noise complaints coming from Pleasanton, and most of those coming from 2 households — IMO the low noise reporting number is that 1) most people are not aware that there’s a Livermore website where you can complain, 2) that website is not an efficient way to report over a typical 10-20 complaints a day where it to track properly, and people just don’t have time in their busy schedules unfortunately! Don’t be mislead by the low complaint numbers, the increasing noise from the planes and jets has become a severe disruption to what once was a peaceful, quiet area.
More of us feel the pain of the noise. Some are more proactive. I bet for every compliant you are receiving there are 10 that are thinking about writing it up.
I call every time – it’s out of control
The number of jets keeps increasing which is by far the biggest issue. I don’t mind the airport too much, but I feel like I need to start complaining so they don’t try to push through the expansion and things they keep talking about.
The airport has been operating since 1965. I always find it mind boggling that people move into a neighborhood under a flight path of an airport then complain about the noise. Jets have been operating out of LVK since its opening.
Mike –
We all know we are near or under a flight path, but I know pilots have deviated from path, flown lower than they should and violated timing restrictions as well.
That coupled with an increase in traffic is what we are talking about here.