YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR AND IN SEDONA, ARIZONA THAT IS NOT MUCH

You get what you pay for! Yavapai County has two Airports. Prescott is one of the busiest GA Airports in the nation, only because Embry Riddle Flight School is located there. The other is Sedona Airport in Sedona, AZ. Both airports seem to go through airport managers faster than I change the oil in my airplane. They do not pay these managers a lot of money. Right now the airport managers job in Prescott is vacant....again. Those of you who follow my blog on a regular basis know that my wife has had a tough three years medically. She is getting stronger now and we decided to go to Sedona for her birthday. I have lived in the Valley for 38 years and have never spent the night in Sedona, just doing breakfast trips. I made hotel reservations at Sky Ranch which is located next to the airport and has tremendous views of the red rocks located 500 feet above the Sedona. Lisa Dahl, former James Beard winner, has four restaurants in Sedona, all with great reputations. We had dinner and lunch plans at her restaurants. We also made rental car reservations with the only service located in the terminal. s Upon arriving in Sedona, we unloaded the plane and gave a fuel order. We really did not need any fuel, but I like to support local FBO’s and Sedona has a good one. Then we went to check into the rental car counter. The rental car company on the field is a mom and pop service renting older cars. They took my credit card and blocked out money on my account. I am used to this as all hotel and rental car companies do this. Then the proverbial crap hit the fan. The owner at the counter gave me a credit card slip to sign for a lot of money. I refused to sign this as I would be liable for this amount for any reason. I have never signed a charge card receipt for a hotel or rental car company until leaving. I showed the guy where he already blocked out the funds on my credit card receipt, but he refused to rent us the car unless we signed the rental charge card receipt. We were at an impasse. There was no way that I was going to sign the credit card receipt. I tried to get a car from Enterprise and Avis with no avail since I did not make a reservation with them. My wife and I talked it over and decided to cancel our hotel and all our food reservations and flew back to Scottsdale. You have a Mickey Mouse airport manager that puts a Mickey Mouse rental car company on the field and you get what you pay for. We canceled our fuel order, hotel and dinner reservations. I figure that this cost the City over $2000.00 in money we would have spent there. In addition I have told all my aviation friends if you need a rental car in Sedona to use Enterprise. We had such a bad taste in our mouth upon leaving that I doubt we will ever go back. There are too many alternatives, and we planned a trip to the Grand Canyon for a belated birthday. You get what you pay for which is not much at Sedona Airport.

NBAA CONVENTION LAS VEGAS

National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) held their convention in Las Vegas this week. It has been 9 days from the horrible shooting incident occurred. I have been traveling to Las Vegas since 1970 and have never seen the town so subdued. There was a quiet aurora around the City and in the hotel casinos. Fewer people were in Vegas than I have ever encountered. When I checked in to my hotel my room was not ready, and they asked me if I would like a penthouse room at the same price. That has never happened to me before in Vegas. I arrived early on Tuesday the first day of the convention at Henderson Airport (HND). I needed a reservation number to be allowed to enter Class D Airspace. When I told the tower my number I could hear all ATC laughing, the number was 007. Flying weather up and back was fantastic. Pure VFR weather both ways with a 25 Kt. crosswind going home. HND airport is the host for the event. It is located about a thirty minute ride from the Strip in Las Vegas. NBAA, as always, provided buses from HND to the convention center, and then provided buses from the convention center to all the hotels on the Strip. HND is home to the static display of which their were 85 aircraft on display. In addition the night before several planes were towed down the strip from HND to the convention center for an indoor static display. My only disappointment was not being approached at the static display as the vendors were too busy talking among themselves, so i did my own tours. All the big boys of jets were there. Global 7000, Gulfstream 650, Falcon 8X and several Cessna Jets were the big hitters on display. My favorite plane was a polished aluminum DC 3. It was gorgeous. I spent most of the morning going through the static display and then bused over to the convention center. NBAA does not overlap much with piston general aviation (GA). However this year it did. The biggest issue facing GA this year is HR 2997 which is a bill supporting privatization of Air Traffic Control (ATC). I can not recollect when I have seen Mark Baker, CEO of AOPA, Jack Pelton, President of EAA and Ed Bolen, President of NBAA on the same stage. I wish that GA be referred to as smaller piston airplanes and Jets be referred to as Business Aviation. As of now they are all grouped together under the GA category. This year all three groups have this one issue in common to defeat HR 2997. Everyone involved in GA realizes how serious this is and could be very detrimental in the future of limiting airspace to GA for the Airlines and user fees. We have the best ATC system in the world. It does not need fixing, it just needs to be funded on a consistent level to update programs such as NxtGen. HR 2997 is the biggest threat to the future of GA. There are three exhibit halls are NBAA and they are big. I am usually worn out after trying to visit each booth. Of course I could not stop at every booth to chat or I would never get through all the exhibitors. I found it interesting that the crossover booths that apply to GA and Jets were very busy. ForeFlight, Bose and MYGOFLIGHT had excellent attendance. When I go to NBAA I try to catch up with old aviation friends. It was difficult having much of a conversation with Ryan McBride, Mark Baker, Tom Haines and two people I missed completely were Heidi Williams, in charge of airspace for NBAA, and Rob Mark editor of Flying Magazine. They were all very busy. This gives me a reason to go back in two years. The other aspect I truly enjoy is chatting up the people around me on the bus rides. I met people from all over the world and always find this fascinating. I do not know how the attendance was this year. It looked down to me but it is such a large venue it is truly hard to tell. I would also like to thank Scottsdale Airport (SDL) for keeping my bag in their booth until I left the show to check in at my hotel.

MIGHTY MOUSE IS ON THE WAY!

When I was a kid growing up we had four channels on TV, and they were all in black and white. I used to watch Mighty Mouse cartoons with my sister, and he was one of the super heroes of our day. The show’s theme song stated: here I come to save the day...Mighty Mouse is on the way. Two meetings have been held in reference to engines and propellers; and in attendance were engine manufactures, propeller manufactures, FAA, EAA, AOPA, Cirrus Pilots Association, Beech Pilots Association and Cessna Pilots Association along with Mike Busch. For some reason Beech and Cessna did not think it was important enough to attend the second meeting. The reason this all came about is that Continental Engines sent out a mandatory service bulletin that could have led owners of these engines to payout anywhere from $20,000 to $35,000 to perform this mandatory service bulletin. Mandatory service bulletins are not mandatory in the United States but are mandatory in other countries. Usually when a company issues a mandatory service bulletin they ask the FAA to issue an Airworthy Directive (AD). I really disdain manufactures asking for an AD because it absolves the manufacture of any liability. When there is a recall on a car, the manufacture is responsible for ten years. Unless your plane is in the warranty period you are out of luck for an AD. I have argued against this for years. If a manufacture makes a mistake in production they should be responsible for it. Their answer is that they have a lot smaller productions than cars and would go out of business if they had to do this. With our lenient bankruptcy laws a company could close down today and start up as a new business tomorrow. This all leads me to our super hero, Mike Busch. Mike fly’s a Cessna 310 which means he would have an expense of approximately $50,000 if Continental was issued the AD. He took it upon himself to fight this service bulletin before an AD was issued. He involved all of the above listed. I was not in attendance for this meeting but the report back from those who were there is that he presented a case of how this could be handled without an AD being issued. I understand his presentation was eloquent, presented with facts and no emotions. The FAA reconsidered and did not issue an AD. Mike is truly a super hero to all those that own Continental engines. He saved people a small fortune. Without his advocacy, along with AOPA and EAA, the FAA would have certainly issued and AD. I am very thankful for his service to and knowledge of general aviation.