After some five years of operations at the San Carlos Airport, the small-aircraft, members-only airline Surf Air has not landed any flights at the county-owned airport in more than a month, according to airport officials.
The airport doesn’t have information on whether the airline will continue operations, airport spokesman Davi Howard said in an email, who noted Surf Air does not correspond with the airport about its operations.
Airport Manager Gretchen Kelly said previously the airline ramped up its service to an average of 15 flights a day in early 2017 from some three a day when it first started operations at the airport in 2013.
The downshift in flights this summer corresponds with the flaring of a legal dispute between Surf Air and its former operator, Encompass Aviation, which alleged it never received some $3.1 million in overdue payments from Surf Air in a lawsuit filed with the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York in June. The airline responded with a counterclaim filed with the same court in July in which it called its former business partner a disgruntled vendor whose leaders attempted to oust the airline’s management and take over the company.
Noise from aircraft using the San Carlos Airport has been a source of concern for residents in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties since 2013, when Surf Air began routing flights through the general aviation airport where pilots of small aircraft train and store their aircraft.
For more than two years, officials have explored measures to address those concerns, including forming a cross-jurisdictional working group to study noise levels as well as improving tracking of flights and communication about airport policies with pilots and other operators.
Howard reported the airport received 493 noise complaints in August of 2017, a figure that rose to 1,220 complaints received in May. As of Aug. 24, 460 noise complaints were logged for the month.
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