Buffalo River Aviation growing, hasn’t ‘given up a customer’

Bentonville-based Buffalo River Aviation has grown rapidly since its founding in 2021 by offering business travelers an old-fashioned value proposition: Time is money.

Since its founding in 2021, it has expanded from three pilots to nine, four of them added in the past four months. Last year, it had two planes. Soon it will have five. Buffalo River Aviation has more than $20 million in aircraft assets.

Meanwhile, it’s doubling its hangar space at Thaden Field to 24,000 square feet and is constructing its own fuel farm to better meet demand for travelers who fly at odd hours. It plans to expand to Little Rock with a plane and staffed presence there. In June, it will start construction on another 24,000-square-foot hangar in Neosho, Mo., for long-term and excess storage. It’s also becoming partners with its maintenance provider in Oklahoma City.

CEO Chris Townsley, one of three owners along with Chief Operating Officer Brian Ahlert and Chief Financial Officer Austin Albers, estimated that 60%-70% of the company’s business comes from business travelers. Most are entrepreneurs, including franchise owners and small business owners operating in multiple locations. Walmart vendors are a notable part of the customer base. While the retailer itself has its own fleet, Buffalo River Aviation has flown executives on personal missions.

“A statistic that I’m extremely proud of is we have not given back a customer,” Townsley said. “Once they come to us, they stay with us. We don’t hear about them going elsewhere. They come to us first.”

Buffalo River Aviation has two aircraft in its fleet, including a King Air 90 that Townsley and Albers own. The company has bought three more planes. A larger King Air 200 with four more seats soon will be available after being refurbished by Rosewood Completions in Mena. Townsley said it looks brand new and “smells like a leather shop.” Two more planes are being refurbished. One, a Citation Sovereign, will fly customers comfortably coast-to-coast.

Townsley acknowledged that chartering a flight is not the cheapest way to travel. Paramount Business Jets has the average hourly rate range between $2,000 and $4,000 per hour for turboprops and smaller jets, and $10,000 and $14,000 per hour for larger private jets.

Buffalo River Aviation doesn’t charge an hourly rate but a trip or mission cost, which can vary based on the aircraft, destination and how long travelers remain there. The planes can transport four to six people. But while it might cost more than other forms of transportation on the front end, it saves executive-level travelers a lot of time and helps them avoid expenses, too.

“When you put three or four or five executives — executive salaries, executive overnight accommodations into a scenario like that, suddenly the value proposition’s there,” Townsley said.

The King Air can fly from Northwest Arkansas to Dallas in less than an hour and land the occupants at the closest airport to passengers’ destination. Passengers can board the plane at 7 a.m., arrive on time for an 8:30 a.m. meeting, and be home that evening. The company meets one customer in Cleveland 15 minutes from the office. Two hours later, the passengers are in Northwest Arkansas. Buffalo River Aviation arranges for car service. By the end of the day, the customers are back in Cleveland.

“To try to get into XNA from whatever location these vendors are coming from, you’re going to lose a day on the front, and you’re going to lose a day on the back to get your hour or two-hour meeting with Walmart,” Ahlert said. “And while going through all that hustle and bustle, there’s going to be a hotel. There’s going to be rental cars. The cost starts to add up. And with us, it’s a one-day venture.”

The company also does a lot of short-notice flights. A construction company executive can quickly respond to a problem on an out-of-state project rather than lose precious hours driving. It’s also a convenient and family-friendly way for customers to travel to vacation spots. Pets travel on the planes routinely.

Company leaders decided early that, unlike many charter operations, Buffalo River would operate with two pilots on all its flights. A single pilot can be timed out if he makes two trips in one day. And while acknowledging that it’s highly unlikely a pilot will collapse in flight, Townsley noted that, “Nobody was ever up there wishing that they’d saved 500 bucks by not paying another guy to be sitting there to be able to land that day.”

The three joined forces thanks to their shared interest in aviation. Townsley and Albers came together first. Townsley owns a health care information technology company. He decentralized his office during the COVID-19 pandemic and realized when he returned that he wasn’t needed there as badly as he thought he was.

Meanwhile, he had started flying in 2008 as a business tool and had built a hangar at Bentonville’s Thaden Field in 2018. He made friends in the aviation community. Albers was one of his tenants. He commuted daily from his home in Northwest Arkansas to his business on the Buffalo National River, the Buffalo Outdoor Center resort, which he still owns. Together, they bought a King Air 90 with other partners that they used for their own businesses.

Townsley said he eventually became useful to others as an aviator. Others saw him as a mentor. He was helping people with their airplanes. He began to see it as a potential business opportunity.

“That’s where this idea came out of,” he said. “I looked up and it was like, ‘You know what? Maybe I want to do aviation as a career for the second piece.’”

Ahlert joined the company in 2022 after a long career in aviation. The Fort Smith native grew up around the Air National Guard unit there and served 28 years in the military. He flew sleek F-16s for seven years and then converted to the A-10 Warthog, a close-combat, heavy-duty aircraft. He was deployed to Iraq and twice to Afghanistan. He then flew for a commercial airline.

The company started the charter process in 2022 and is still waiting on it to be completed, although it’s close. Obtaining an air carrier service charter from the Federal Aviation Administration is extremely difficult, so at first the company’s revenues came from flying and managing other people’s planes. To provide charter services, it entered into a contractual relationship with Little Rock’s Central Flying Service and has operated under that certificate since March 2024. That certificate has since been acquired by Jet Tech Management.

Buffalo River Aviation expects to have its own charter soon. From there, the sky’s the limit. And it all started when Townsley and Albers were flying planes to support their other businesses.

“Suddenly, my hobby has become my day job, and it’s the most amazing thing ever,” Townsley said.