For more than two years, West Sonoma County residents were told the quieter departure route from their regional airport was no longer feasible. Then the Bohemian Grove's private jets arrived in July — and the FAA switched to it for 27 days straight.

A temporary flight-path change made to accommodate the secretive all-male Bohemian Club encampment has become a case study in double standards for residents living under the flight paths of Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport. When the elite gathering ended, the FAA reverted to the noisier route residents have complained about since 2024. For North Bay Rep. Jared Huffman, who has spent two years pressing the FAA, the Bohemian Grove accommodation was proof that the relief he'd been told was impossible could be granted overnight for the ultra-rich.

West Sonoma County residents have spent more than two years asking the Federal Aviation Administration for the same thing: roll back a 2024 departure route that funnels jets over their homes and give them back the quieter path they used to have. For more than two years, according to Rep. Jared Huffman, the answer was that it couldn't be done.

Then the Bohemian Grove came to town.

During the exclusive men's club's July encampment in Monte Rio, the FAA leaned heavily on the airport's older, more flexible "Charlie Eight" departure procedure — the very route residents had been requesting. Locals tracking departures counted roughly 24 flights a day using the smoother path, with only about three per day on the newer route, KQED reported. When the 27-day gathering ended, the agency switched back.

"When the Bohemians come to town, they get the response that I've spent the better part of two years demanding with my West County constituents," Huffman said at a community roundtable at the airport on Aug. 5, per KQED. "I want to make sure … that the folks I represent get the same consideration as the billionaires and oligarchs who are having a good time in Bohemian Grove."

At issue is the RREHD ONE procedure — pronounced "Redhead" — a satellite-guided route the FAA introduced in January 2024 as commercial traffic at the Santa Rosa airport grew. It directs departing planes through a narrow corridor at lower altitudes over Sebastopol, Forestville and Guerneville. Noise complaints to the FAA have quadrupled since it took effect, according to KQED.

"When you're in an environment where you can hear your own heartbeat and the blood in your ears because it's that quiet, and a jet comes over you at 60 decibels, that is a shocker," resident Andrea Oreck said during the Aug. 5 community roundtable at the airport, according to KQED. Oreck, who is part of the group Fair Flights Over Sonoma County, told SFist the noise was "like being in a library reading a pleasant book and having someone drive in with a motorcycle."

The older Charlie Eight route is less rigid, giving controllers more room to spread traffic across a wider area rather than concentrating it over one strip of the county. "Charlie Eight spreads that pain around a little bit, so it's not as impactful on just one section of the population, one section of our ecology," said Che Casul of County Supervisor Lynda Hopkins' office, per KQED.

The FAA has said the July adjustment was made "for safety reasons due to the increased air traffic from the nearby Bohemian Grove event," and that it returned to normal parameters once the extra traffic cleared. In a statement cited by SFist, the agency said it "remains committed to ensuring the safety of flight operations while addressing community noise concerns."

For Huffman, the episode undercut years of official explanations. His office, he said, had been told repeatedly that Charlie Eight was no longer a feasible path — even as the FAA was, in his words, "doing Charlie Eight right now." He likened the temporary change to "corruption" and, in an Aug. 5 letter to FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, demanded the agency immediately restore pre-2024 departure protocols and work with the county on a lasting fix, KQED reported. To SFist, he called it "such an unacceptable double standard … One set of rules and privileges for the fabulously rich and another for the rest of us."

Airport officials have said the 2024 changes were made without their input or knowledge. The Bohemian Club, whose members have included Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and the late billionaire David Koch, has held its summer encampment along the Russian River since the 1870s.

Residents say the math is simple. "If this relief can be given to the powerful elite for a holiday retreat at a moment's notice for 27 days," Oreck said, "then it can be given to us who live under that flight path every day."