45 North Flight and Little Hawk Logistics launch on-demand Daher TBM charter service from Scottsdale

45 North Flight and Little Hawk Logistics will launch an on-demand Daher TBM charter service from Scottsdale Airport, Arizona, in early October 2026. The venture combines 45 North Flight's Part 135 operating capability with Little Hawk Logistics' charter brokerage experience built around the Daher TBM platform.

45 North Flight, headquartered in Traverse City, Michigan, will serve as the direct air carrier under FAA Air Carrier Certificate 9CCA698M, maintaining sole operational control of every flight, including flight authorisation, crew assignment, airworthiness and regulatory compliance. Little Hawk Logistics will support the launch as owner of the aircraft and as the air charter broker responsible for marketing and arranging flights. The primary aircraft will be a 2017 Daher TBM 910 owned by Little Hawk and operated by 45 North Flight, hangared at Jet Aviation Scottsdale. Flights will be crewed by five professional captains and a full-time first officer, with two crew members also holding FAA check airman authorisations under 45 North Flight's approved training programme.

Eric Walden, founder and president of Little Hawk Logistics, cited the TBM 900 series' top true airspeed of 330 knots and its ability to serve smaller regional airports as well suited to travel patterns across the south-western United States. "Scottsdale gives us the opportunity to introduce more customers to an aircraft that can reach many of the region's most popular destinations quickly and efficiently," Walden said. Little Hawk Logistics, based at Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport in Virginia, owns three Daher TBM turboprop aircraft and has focused its ownership and brokerage activities on the type since 2014, and will establish a brokerage and customer service presence in Scottsdale. Walden previously served as a captain at Atlantic Coast Airlines and spent 11 years at NetJets before founding Little Hawk. Scottsdale Airport serves the greater Phoenix metropolitan area, and the City of Scottsdale's airport master plan forecasts annual charter passenger growth of 8.8 per cent, roughly three times the projected growth rate for total airport operations.

This launch illustrates a structure increasingly common in single-type turboprop charter: an aircraft owner and brokerage pairs with a separately certificated Part 135 carrier rather than building its own operating certificate. The owner supplies the asset, the customer relationships and the type expertise accumulated over years of operating one airframe family, while the carrier supplies the regulatory and crew infrastructure needed to fly it commercially.

The arrangement also shows how operators pick markets around airport-level demand forecasts rather than just population size. Scottsdale's own planning figures point to charter passenger growth outpacing total airport operations growth, which is the kind of segment-specific signal that makes a secondary general-aviation airport attractive for a turboprop entrant even without the traffic volumes of a major hub.

What happens next will depend on how quickly the single 2017 TBM 910 is utilised once flights begin in October, and whether Little Hawk's fleet of three TBMs expands into the Scottsdale base to support demand growth it is anticipating.