The first Delta Air Lines daily nonstop flight between Santa Rosa and Salt Lake City landed Tuesday morning at Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport, bringing the regional facility back up to four commercial airlines serving it and offering its first service to speed passengers to their flights.
Delta flight 3541’s 76-seat Embraer E-175 two-engine regional jet arrived at 10:26 a.m. with 52 passengers aboard after an hour and 45 minute trip from Utah, according to the airline and Flightradar24. Fifty-nine passengers were booked for the return flight that departed just before noon.
The airline’s second flight of the day on that route, Delta 3533, landed in Santa Rosa just before 4 p.m. Forty-five passengers were on that flight, and 27 got on the plane for the return trip, Delta said.
Delta joins Alaska, American and Southwest airlines in serving Santa Rosa.
Delta also became the first airline at the Sonoma County airport to offer curbside passenger and baggage check-in, Airport Manager Jon Stout said. The airline set up a check-in podium beneath a tent just north of the terminal along the main walkway, and passengers used the service Tuesday morning.
The airport would like to eventually make curbside check-in available to other carriers, Stout said, potentially through a shared contract with costs allocated based on passenger volume. That could become increasingly important as activity grows. Stout said the airport is essentially full at its ticket counters and has limited queuing space for the airlines.
“And if it’s a big success for Delta, I could see other carriers being interested in that service,” he said.
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Passengers disembark the first Delta Airlines flight from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa on Tuesday, October 6, 2026. (Christopher Chung/The Press Democrat)
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Passengers disembark the first Delta Airlines flight from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa on Tuesday, October 6, 2026. (Christopher Chung/The Press Democrat)
Alaska Airlines, the largest commercial carrier serving Santa Rosa, in May announced plans for a nonstop link to Salt Lake City starting Nov. 1 but recently dropped it.
Salt Lake City International Airport is a major hub for Delta, as the airline makes up about 70% of the traffic there, according to the facility. The airport has over 300 departures daily to 100-plus destinations, and it accommodated roughly 28 million passengers last year. Ten ski resorts are within an hour’s drive.
Delta on Tuesday announced a Wine Takes Flight program that lets eligible SkyMiles members check one case of wine free on qualifying flights from Sonoma County and four other Northern California airports: Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose and Sacramento. The case may contain up to 12 unopened 750-milliliter bottles and weigh no more than 50 pounds.
The program resembles Alaska Airlines’ longer-running Wine Flies Free program, launched in 2018, which allows eligible loyalty-program members to check a case of wine without a baggage fee from 34 West Coast airports in California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Southwest has a similar program there.
In other Santa Rosa news for Alaska, it is ending service linking Sonoma County with Ontario at month’s end. But Alaska is still on schedule to begin direct flights from Santa Rosa to Boise and Phoenix on Nov. 1.
Avelo Airlines had flown between Sonoma County and Ontario until early last year. Alaska resumed service to the city March 18. Alaska’s planned Boise and Salt Lake City routes also would have replaced service Avelo cancelled before leaving the Sonoma County airport in August 2025.
The fourth airline serving Santa Rosa is Southwest, which in April began flights a few days a week to Denver. The plan is to increase flight frequency in coming months until going to daily service on that route March 11, 2027.
Jeff Quackenbush joined North Bay Business Journal in May 1999. Reach him at jeff@nbbj.news or 707-521-4256.
