Background/Need

Gnoss Field Background

Marin County Airport or Gnoss Field is a public airport operated, managed and maintained by the Marin County Public Works Department.  It is located in the unincorporated area approximately three miles northeast of the City of Novato on a 120-acre site situated between U.S. Highway 101 and the Petaluma River.  The airport is home to over 295 aircraft ranging from small, single-engine planes to corporate jets. Gnoss Field is classified as a "general aviation" airport, which is defined by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as an airport that serves personal and business aircraft, but not scheduled commercial airlines. 

Gnoss Field is the nearest general aviation facility to San Francisco and is also close to the Sonoma/Napa wine country.  As a result, it is a popular destination for both business and pleasure aircraft.  Gnoss Field currently has one runway (Runway13/31) that is 3,300 feet long and 75 feet wide that serves the approximately 95,000 operations that occur at the Airport annually.

The Problem to be Addressed

 Gnoss Field faces the following operations and safety problems with its runway:

1. The existing runway is not long enough to enable aircraft to operate at their rated fuel and passenger capacities

To ensure safe takeoffs from Gnoss Field's runway, pilots have to limit the weight of the aircraft to a level well below what the aircraft was designed to accommodate.  They currently achieve this by either reducing fuel or passengers/cargo or both.  Reducing fuel significantly limits the distance an aircraft can fly and typically forces pilots taking off from Gnoss Field to fly to another airport with adequate runway length where they can fuel up completely and then continue on to their original destination.  Solving the problem by reducing the number of passengers and their cargo often results in an aircraft making two trips to the same destination to transport what would otherwise be considered a normal passenger load.  As a result, aircraft using Gnoss Field are forced to operate in a highly inefficient and wasteful manner.

2. The existing runway does not have enough additional length to safely accommodate aircraft that may need to roll beyond the end of the regular runway in an emergency   

Established airport safety standards for runways, based on FAA guidelines, include additional areas at the ends of the runway (called Runway Safety Areas or RSAs) that are designed to safely accommodate aircraft that may not be able to come to a complete stop within the length of the regular runway.  These emergencies can be due to a mechanical failure or pilot error.  Based on the latest FAA guidelines, RSAs need to be free of obstruction, graded and capable of supporting the weight of an aircraft as well as emergency equipment.  For airports that serve the type of aircraft that Gnoss Field does, the FAA guidelines call for a minimum 240-foot long and 120-foot wide RSA beyond the end of each runway.  Currently, Gnoss Field Airport has a 125-foot overrun area on the south end of its runway and a 100-foot overrun on the runway's north end.  Thus, Gnoss Field does not meet the current minimum standards for airport runway safety and, as a result, pilots and aircraft using the Airport are at risk in a landing or takeoff emergency.

If nothing is done to address these problems, the following results and consequences are likely:

1. The current airport inefficiencies would continue whereby pilots using Gnoss Field would have to continue to compensate for the airport's inadequate runway length by reducing fuel and/or passenger loads below normal levels or continue to be at risk during landings and takeoffs.
2. To meet current FAA standards for RSAs (see prior explanation above about Runway Safety Areas), the length of Gnoss Field's existing runway would need to be reduced to accommodate the longer and wider RSAs. This could force aircraft operators who use Gnoss Field to move to other area general aviation airports with longer runways that comply more fully with current safety standards.