Collaboration Breeds Good Will, Growth, Development

Dawson Aircraft, Inc., a well established aircraft crash retrieval and major airframe repair business based at Clinton Municipal Airport in Van Buren County (AR), has sealed a buyout deal to take over the aircraft salvage and parts division of Arkansas Airframe (ArkAir).

Established in 1985 by Jim and JoAnn Collom, ArkAir has grown to become a name synonymous with excellence in the aircraft industry. Headquartered at Holley Mountain Airpark, ArkAir will continue its fine tradition of rebuilding planes to optimum standards and specifications, however the company’s extensive inventory of airframe parts and salvage will be relocated to Dawson facilities.

"When we moved it up here, it took 10 months of hauling a load or more each day," said Jim Collom, referencing ArkAir’s relocation in 1998 from a neighboring location to Dawson at Clinton Municipal, to new facilities at nearby Holley Mountain Airpark.

"I leased that chunk of land across the road for the salvage," Will Dawson, president of Dawson Aircraft, Inc., gestured toward an expansive field directly across from his main facility at 544 Airport Rd. The additional property adds 11 acres to Dawson’s outdoor storage and holding area and is conveniently located to the parts department being constructed adjacent to the main Dawson hangar.

As part of the transaction, Timothy Posey, longtime ArkAir parts & service manager, has made the transition to Dawson, joining Donnie Medlock, Ty Kempson, Eric Draxten and Hayden Sowers on the service team headed by Wade Wherry, general manager.

Dawson said he felt the expansion was a natural offshoot of his company’s primary occupation, which focuses on the retrieval and holding of crashed aircraft for safety and insurance inspections along with doing major airframe repairs. He said he’d been waiting to get a good team together before taking on such a significant expansion, and that he knew the time to move forward with these plans was now.

Since 1990, the aviation business has been good to Dawson. A native Van Buren County lad who grew up on a diary farm in Bee Branch, Dawson returned to his hometown stomping grounds "on a stick horse, with a wing and a prayer" just over a decade ago, determined to "earn a living." But, as is seen by many as a typical Ozark’s trait, pickin’s seemed slim.

Collom noted that residential growth at Holley Mountain Airpark (2A2, pictured), a gated community being developed by the Colloms expressly to accommodate the wants and needs of general aviation pilots and their families, had helped move his envisioned timetable to the next predictable step. And that doing the deal with longtime friend, fellow aviator and business associate, Will Dawson, had really put the frosting on everyone’s cake.

FMI: www.DawsonAircraft.com; www.ArkansasAirframe.com; www.HolleyMountainAirpark.com