TennesseeLandedRick Barnes flew to Nate Ament's draft night on a booster's Falcon, not a Vols jet
Tennessee's basketball staff went Knoxville to Teterboro for the 2026 NBA Draft aboard N865CS, a Falcon 900EX owned by Cellular Sales founder and UT distinguished alum Dane Scism, not one of the university's own turboprops.
- Knoxville/Maryville, TNTeterboro, NJKTYS → KTEBJun 23, 202611:22 AM12:54 PMEDT1h 32m
At 11:22 a.m. Eastern on June 23, a Dassault Falcon 900EX lifted off McGhee Tyson in Knoxville and turned northeast. Ninety minutes later it settled onto Teterboro, the executive field that serves Manhattan. While it was still in the air, Tennessee's basketball account posted a photo of Rick Barnes grinning in a cream leather cabin, captioned "NYC bound for Nate's big night." The jet, tail number N865CS, was airborne at the exact minute that post went out.
It was not a University of Tennessee plane. The school's flight operation runs two King Airs and a pair of Citation light jets, and none of them has the wide, club-four cabin in the photo. N865CS belongs to Reef Aviation LLC, registered to 9040 Executive Park Drive in Knoxville. That address is the headquarters of Cellular Sales, the Verizon retailer Dane Scism founded. Scism is a 2021 UT Distinguished Alumnus, and his Falcon is the one the basketball program flies.
The timing fits the night. The 2026 NBA Draft opened its first round at 8 p.m. Eastern on ABC and ESPN, with Tennessee freshman forward Nate Ament projected as a lottery pick and Ja'Kobi Gillespie and Felix Okpara in the second-round conversation. "Nate's big night" was the draft.
Jun 23, 12:09 PMThe jet's paperwork tells its own story. Reef Aviation bought the Falcon in June 2021. Before that the same airframe, serial 136, sat behind a Utah owner-trust as N822WW, and earlier still flew as N22LC under a 2012 bank loan. The full chain of title is in the FAA records file, no open-records request required.