August 5, 2004

San Jose airport flying toward becoming premier high-tech aviation facility of the 21st century
Aug. 18 groundbreaking set for $300-plus million north concourse project

Editor’s Note: The following is the fourth article in an ongoing series about the city’s departments and appointed officials. Next Week: San Jose’s Parks, Recreation and Neighborhoods Services Director Sara Hensley.

By Sheila Sanchez
Staff Writer

In the movie “The Terminal,” viewers see the airport as a space capsule—an enclosed, sealed environment where an individual could safely live for months while interacting with those around him.

San Jose’s Director of Aviation Ralph G. Tonseth feels a peculiar kinship with the movie’s protagonist as he speaks about his fascination with airports, saying they’re an interesting niche of society, unique cultural and social institutions with their own philosophical construction, rich in tradition and folklore.

The 62-year-old informal, blue-eyed and gray-haired Tonseth obviously enjoys the day to day rhythm of the Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport. “This is just a wonderful little world to live in. It’s almost ideal,” says the jovial Tonseth during a recent interview from his office located on Skyport Drive and North First Street. “If you work for a government, this is probably the best job you can have.”

Located two miles north of downtown, the airport is a self-supporting enterprise, owned and operated by the city since 1947. The passenger total in 2003 exceeded 10.7 million. The airport generates about $500 million in state taxes annually and employs 425 city employees and more than 5,000 airline and tenant employees who help run the facility 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The 1,000-acre airport averages nearly 400 commercial and more than 150 general aviation departures and landings daily. Terminal A is 243,800 square feet with 14 gates. The international arrival facility is 70,000 square feet with three gates and Terminal C is 160,000 square feet with 15 gates. It has three runways, two of which are 11,000 feet long.

“We have a significant presence in the aviation activity of the country,” adds Tonseth of the only commercial airport within the Bay Area’s southern nine counties. “We take seriously our regional role as an economic engine for the area.”

Tonseth’s job involves the airport’s oversight, from making sure the facility’s bathrooms are clean to the airport being safe. The Santana Row resident is also responsible for administering the airport’s $90 million annual operating budget and a current year capital budget of $400-plus million.

The facility is the largest publicly owned economic venture in Santa Clara County, providing public air infrastructure to support Silicon Valley businesses and employees, which represents half its travel. It’s run much like a private corporation, without any tax support from the city. Its revenues come from user fees and federal grants.

A seven-member airport commission functions as an advisory body to the San Jose City Council. They meet monthly with the council to discuss issues affecting the airport.

The city’s airport expansion project began when city officials updated the 1980 airport master plan. The council finally adopted the plan in December of 1997, winning several lawsuits that had stalled the ambitious project.

With a “record of decision” from the federal government in December of 1999, Tonseth began working hard to get the facility ready for the 21st century with a goal to have a high mixture of business and leisure travel. “We’ve spent the last 15 years putting together the planning and the environmental documents to build what I call the first airport of the 21st century,” Tonseth says, sitting comfortably in his spacious office.

Once that was overcome, Tonseth began immediately planning improvements on the airfield side. A $300-plus million north concourse rebuilding project is the first of a three-phase terminal improvement program that will add 17,000 square feet of concession space for retail and food services at the airport.

When finished, the plan will have completely transformed the airport into an ultra efficient high-technology facility.

“We hope it will create a real striking image for the city,” Tonseth says. The terminal area complex will cost more than $1.3 billion. The entire airport improvement project, including upgrades to roadways, garages, and other structures is approaching $3 billion.

“The facility that currently exists is inadequate to represent this city and this valley. It’s a very old and dated airport. We need to modernize it, both to represent the city and its image but also to better represent the city to others in the business community.

“If we want to continue to be a center of business we have to grow up and act like we’re a center of business and that requires us to have a facility commensurate with that.”

Tonseth’s career span at the airport, the 33rd largest in the country and the 74th largest in the world, has also been directed toward improving air service quality, rather than increasing air service.

Before Tonseth’s arrival, the airport was predominantly served by general aviation aircraft and by short-haul commuter airlines. In 1990, the facility turned the corner and changed from being a municipal airport to an international airport.

Thanks to deregulation, it now serves every major airline carrier in the United States, except U.S. Airways. It also has international flights, with one that’s been flying to Tokyo, Japan, for 12 years.

One of the facility’s fiscal challenges is related to the community’s economic health. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Tonseth says the airport suffered a big blow. The father of two, a motorcycle rider and avid outdoor recreationist, recalls how the air industry downed all of the country’s airplanes within a couple of hours and then tried to handle all the stranded passengers, making sure that the threat level was dealt with. “It was a very intense couple of days. We have not recovered from that yet. It has changed our life fundamentally in that the airport has more security-related activities going on,” he says.

One of them is the creation of the federal Transportation Security Administration (TSA) post 9/11, which has dramatically improved the way airports check passengers and their luggage. The airport employs 275 full-time people to do this task. “Just dealing with the ever increasing requirements from the federal government on airport security is a real problem,” he says of the federally non-funded mandates. “Trying to balance the new security measures with an acceptable level of customer satisfaction, while building a whole new airport, makes you feel like a juggler,” he quips.

Another challenge for Tonseth is trying to ignore daily airport activities and problems that can sometimes keep an aviation director from having a clear, long-term vision in mind for the facility he’s running.

The most rewarding aspect of his job is working with what he calls an “incredibly talented pool of people who get along well and show kindness and concern toward each other” and training a young generation of airport graduates, many now employed at other national airports.

The airport is the fifth one for Tonseth, who was hired by the city in 1990 after serving at the Fresno Air Terminal for 10 years. He has more than 40 years of airport aviation experience under his belt, working for airports in Ontario, Stockton and Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles native, who aspired to be a lawyer, was raised in the San Gabriel Valley. He went to California State University in Los Angeles, then called L.A. State. Two weeks after graduating from college with a bachelor’s degree in public administration he landed his first job at the Los Angeles International Airport. Without the availability in those days of aviation-specific degrees, Tonseth went into what he thought would best suit his desire to work in the aviation industry.

Aviation, in those days, he explains, was a small business. Tonseth represents the first generation of aviation officials who are not primarily World War II military pilots. There was the feeling, he says, that if pilots knew how to fly airplanes, then they knew how to run airports. “It was a completely bogus idea, but that’s how it was in those days,” recalls Tonseth.

Many of those WWII pilots began aviation businesses with surplus military transport aircraft to start supplemental airline carriers such as Standard Airways.

In the 1970s, the industry was deregulated and airlines began to apply for service and the business kicked off. “If it hadn’t been for deregulation, San Jose would still be a dusty little airport,” he says.

Ground will be broken for the north concourse rebuilding project Aug. 18, at 11 a.m., at the south end of Terminal A, 1661 Airport Blvd., San Jose, Calif., 95110.

For more information on the airport, 1732 No. First St., Ste. 600, San Jose, Calif., 95112, visit www.sjc.org, or e-mail Tonseth at rtonseth@sjc.org, or call (408) 501-7600.