Regional Airport Board still discussing rental cars

For the past few months, Upper Cumberland Regional Airport Board has been discussing how to solve the problem of having courtesy and rental cars for the pilots and guests who land on their runways, and those discussions continued at length during their March meeting.

Airport manager Dean Selby told the board that Enterprise is now keeping some cars at the airport on a trial basis, but the process of renting cars to pilots has proven difficult.

“They won’t let us make the reservations,” he said. “The pilot has to call us, then we have to call Enterprise for the pilot. If the pilot doesn’t have an account, then we have to call them back, and they have to create an account. Then the pilot has to call us back, and we have to call Enterprise to set up the rental. It’s a little bit of a roundabout.”

Selby approached the subject of the airport purchasing four cars to use as a combination of courtesy cars and rental cars.

“If someone comes in and says they need a courtesy car, we could say that the first hour is included,” he suggested, and then explained that they could charge a half- day rental for up to four additional hours and a full day’s rental for anything over that. “If we did this as a rental situation and the cars were paying for themselves, we could have later model vehicles.”

Selby told the board the courtesy cars the airport now owns are in less-than- acceptable condition, with some not having working heat or air conditioning and some with paint peeling off of them.

“I had somebody visit me that flew in last Friday and the car they were in – that was embarrassing,” Ricky Shelton said to Selby and the rest of the board members as he explained the car looked like it was two different colors because of the condition of the paint.  “It’s not a criticism to you or the board or anybody else. It’s just a fact.”

Shelton said his opinion is the airport has to do better to protect the images of the communities it serves.

“I think those cars were great back when we were a small, local airport, but that’s not what we are or what we are trying to do as a region. I think we need to be a little more professional,” he said. “If we are going to be a player in a bigger capacity with businesses and corporate folks flying in here, I would rather not provide one [courtesy car] than to provide one that doesn’t match the image of our airports and our communities.”

Selby seconded Shelton’s opinion saying that was the message he was trying to convey to the board.

“We need to raise that image up,” Selby said. “We have a different clientele coming through, and they are expecting a higher level of service and higher amenities.”

Selby went on to say he wanted to give the Enterprise rental car situation a chance to improve, but he was looking for an additional option in case the logistics of getting the cars to the pilots didn’t improve. Additionally, he reminded the board it needs to look into purchasing new courtesy cars, regardless of whether they used them for rentals or not.

“Pilots and crews expect a courtesy car for an hour or two, so even if we have rental cars [from another vendor], we will have to get courtesy cars. I just thought this could possibly offset the costs,” Selby said again. “What’s the worst case scenario: we look at it and it’s not working so we sell the cars and go back the way it was.”

“Let’s not wait too long. If we have these people coming in – especially the business folks – if they are driving a bad-looking vehicle that doesn’t look too good on our community,” chairperson Randy Porter said. “With all the business we have coming into our communities right now, I think we can do better than what we are.”

The topic of insurance for the rental cars was brought up as a deterrent to the plan, but Selby explained  he has been conversing with Jeff Young, another board member who also rents cars as part of his daily business, and is looking into all of the logistics. He said that he hoped to have a proposal with costs and legalities for the board by the next meeting, which is April 13.