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.