A new company wanting to build a network of general aviation service companies has acquired one at the state's largest airport.
Fly Arkansas LLC's operation at Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field will begin operating under the Lynx FBO Network brand on March 1, Chad Farischon, the network's president and a founding partner, said Thursday.
Fly Arkansas, which also operates at Boone County Regional Airport in Harrison, has been operating out of a hangar at Clinton National's former Hawker Beechcraft complex since 2015 under an agreement with the airport to provide services to general aviation aircraft.
Under the transaction, the amount of which wasn't disclosed, Fly Arkansas retains its presence at the Harrison airport, said Taylor Scott, the company's owner.
Fly Arkansas, which employs about 15 people, is one of two companies at Clinton National providing fuel, ramp space and other services to general aviation aircraft. The other is Tac Air.
Networks such as Lynx can offer discount pricing to customers who use airports within their networks. The discounts are often based on volume purchases and network commitment.
Companies such as Lynx, Fly Arkansas and Tac Air are known in the aviation industry as fixed-base operators, or FBOs.
Fly Arkansas is the Lynx FBO Network's fourth acquisition. The company also owns and operates fixed-based systems in Destin, Fla.; Aurora, Colo.; and Blaine, Minn., which is just outside Minneapolis.
Though the company is relatively new, its management team has years of experience in the aviation industry. Many, including Farischon, are veterans of Landmark Aviation, once the second largest fixed-base operator network in the world.
Landmark Aviation was acquired by Signature Flight Support in 2016 when BBA Aviation, the British parent company of Signature Flight Support, acquired Landmark from the Carlyle Group for $2.065 billion. The deal added 62 fixed-base operators to the Signature network, the largest in the world.
Lynx is backed by the Sterling Group, a private equity firm based in Houston, with more than $2.2 billion in assets under management.
"We're building an FBO network," Farischon said. "We have years of experience in the industry with our team, and we're excited to offer our brand and services to the community."
He pointed to the Lynx operation at the airport in Blaine.
"We were one of the four airports handling Super Bowl traffic" earlier this month when the National Football League's championship game was held in Minneapolis.
Lynx handled 232 aircraft, many of them corporate jets, and sold about 80,000 gallons of fuel during the Super Bowl, he said.
"Our background is FBOs," Farischon said. "We plan to bring that expertise to this area."
The deal also puts Fly Arkansas in a good position financially, Scott said.
"It was just the availability of extra capital so we can go out and expand, basically," he said. "We built this in order to grow the capital and expand into additional locations.
"We're actually taking delivery of a new Boeing business jet aircraft for one of our customers at the end of the month. We're the largest aircraft management company in Arkansas. We're expanding that plus some other FBO opportunities we haven't announced."
As part of the deal, Lynx has to obtain approval from the Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission to acquire Fly Arkansas' lease. Fly Arkansas signed a 10-year lease for 55,000 square feet of space for which it now pays $214,000 annually.
The commission's lease and consultant selection committee on Thursday recommended to the commission that Lynx's assumption of the lease and other agreements be approved. The commission meets Tuesday.
Business on 02/16/2018