Pinnacle Air Expands National/Local Presence

Pinnacle Air Group is moving to the big house.

With their recent multimillion dollar purchase of the 12,742-SF J.B. Hunt Terminal across the jetway, the executive jet service provider will soon be loading passengers from the biggest hangar at Springdale Municipal Airport.

The hangar is about 3,200-SF larger than Pinnacle Air’s current largest hangar and should be ready for use in about three months.

Since beginning in 2000, Pinnacle Air has purchased two fixed-base operators and three multimillion-dollar jets. Since January 2003, Pinnacle Air Services has been the FBO of Springdale Municipal Airport, supplying Shell fuel and other provisions to any plane that lands there. It’s fleet of Learjets make it the largest charter air service operator in the state.

The principals of Pinnacle Air Group, are former Wal-Mart Stores Inc. executive Robert Thornton, J.B. Hunt, Tim Graham and Bill Schwyhart.

About 60 percent of the company’s business isn’t local. It comes from contract work its acquired from being a preferred-service provider for Skyjet, a subsidiary of Bombardier Inc.

“It was just the opposite before we had the Lear 60,” said Nelson Erdmann, general manager for Pinnacle Air.

Pinnacle Air just recently added to its fleet by leasing two 1998 Learjet 60 model aircraft that have since been high in demand. The planes retail for about $13 million new, Erdmann said.

Pinnacle’s reputation has earned the company many guaranteed contracts over the years, Schwyhart said.

“It’s fair to say that if these companies have an opportunity to put their customers on our planes, they will,” Schwyhart said.

Pinnacle also owns and operates two Learjet 31 A models and one Learjet 35.

Erdmann said the rest of Pinnacle’s business is about 30 percent local and 10 percent for use within the company.

Each Pinnacle plane logs about 50-60 hours of flight time per month. Rates average $1,925 per hour. That’s $105,875 per plane per month or $1.27 million in estimate revenue per plane. It costs about $1,000, Erdmann said, to get a plane to take off and land.

Local Appeal

The timesaving appeal for the Learjet or other turbo jet aircraft is essential for some Northwest Arkansas businesspeople.

Ray Green, partner at Kutak Rock’s Fayetteville office, said having a service like Pinnacle has made it more convenient for him to serve the law firm’s out-of-town clients.

“The expense of a jet is substantial,” Green said, “but when you look at the hourly rate I charge my clients, it makes sense for them to put me on a charter service.”

If he were to fly to Allentown, Penn., Green said, it would take him 12 hours to reach his destination on a commercial airliner, so he chose Pinnacle instead.

Turbo Demand

About 2,000 Learjets have been made since the line’s 1964 inception. Northwest Arkansas is home to about 30 of the various Learjet models. Other turbo-jet makers such as Dassault Aviation, Canadair Ltd. and Cessna also have planes registered in the area.

Washington County is home to a total of 218 registered planes and Benton County is home to 225. Most of those registrations indicate fixed-wing, single-engine models. The most prevalent type is the reciprocating engineer, with turbo prop coming in second.

There are more than 27 turbo-jet engine aircraft registered in Benton County, of those, at least 22 are owned by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. There are at least 12 turbo jet engine aircraft registered in Washington County, of which Tyson Foods owns three.