Monticello Live

Bob Worthington, writer for Fly-Low magazine, recently visited the Monticello Airport, and had great praise for airport commissioner Benji Ryburn and airport manager James Barnett, after he left, in the magazine’s article, “The Left Seat” entitles ”BIG AIRPORTS…… and the smaller ones.”

Worthington wrote,…..
A benefit of using smaller airports is the friendly folks that inhabit these places. A case in point is the municipal airport at Monticello, AR.

The airport is open from 7:30 am to 4:30 pm. Our flight for that day began in Maryland, with the last leg ending in Monticello, 470 miles or under three hours. We had plenty of time for the trip. Unfortunately weather intervened.

All of western KY and TN, the entire state of MO and the northeast quarter of AR were under massive thunderstorms. It looked like  I could fly south into AL and then head west to Monticello. We successfully navigated around all the severe weather. Our diversions and weaving around took more time than planned (but we had enough fuel on board for a few more hours of flying) so we landed at Monticello right after it closed. We didn’t know where to go, so we parked and I walked around.

Finally I found a building that said pilot lounge, but it was locked. A note on the door stated that the numbers to open the door were the Unicom frequency, which worked. So now we had an air-conditioned place and bathrooms. I called the Hilton property where we had reservations and was told there were no taxis in town and no one at the hotel who could get us.

I was wandering around outside, wondering what to do and thinking that we should have stopped at a big airport for the night when I ran into Bennie Ryburn III (a commissioner on the airport board). He saw me perplexed and asked if he could help. I explained our plight and he called James Barnett, the airport manager.

A few minutes later James arrived, driving an ex-police car, followed by his wife in her car. The former patrol car was now one of the airport courtesy cars.  They even included directions to the Hilton, we departed for the evening. The car ran perfectly and we returned it the next morning.

Now this is a small airport that provides excellent service.

Reprinted iwth permission from Fly Low. magazine

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 8th, 2011 at 6:26 am and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.