Real Stories

Here's a Nextdoor post from a resident of On The Greens senior community: "...are you aware that there are several other General Aviation Airports that ERAU could use for touch and goes. They even say they use them. But the flight patterns don't show that. Touch and goes were done at the Sedona Airport. Until the residents talked with the owner, (Yavapai County) and then the flight schools stopped using Sedona. How did that happen? I guess there will be enough new pilots trained with out using Sedona. The City of Cottonwood rezoned ranch land around our small lightly used airport to residential land. Developers payed the ranchers good money for that new residential land. Homes were build, many of them 30 or more years ago and had no over flights by our local pilots. About six years ago ERAU started using Cottonwood. Now the NEW traffic pattern is over the homes that were there FIRST. The world will continue to turn every 24 hours or so, without ERAU abusing the residents of Cottonwood, Clarkdale and some county areas. And you know that ERAU does not pay to use our airport. The people that shop in Cottonwood pay a sales tax and some of that money pays the cost of operating and maintaining the airport. Our City Council wants to spend money to make our runway longer and wider so corporate jets can TRY and use our runway. You see, we can not make the runway the 5,000 foot long that those jets require. We will make it about 4,825 feet long. But the FAA will let the jets use our runway if they want to try it. Help me here. What REAL, MEASURABLE, benefit does our free to use airport provide to the residents that actually make up the Cities of Cottonwood and Clarkdale? Remember helicopter medical flights don't use the runway and do just fine on a small community airport."