The airport is used for general aviation; airline flights are subsidized by the federal government's Essential Air Service program at a cost of $1,637,012 (per year).

In the year ending August 31, 2021, the airport had 29,800 aircraft operations, an average of 82 per day: 91% general aviation, 6% air taxi and 3% military.

In 1950 C&S was operating daily round trip Douglas DC-3 service on a routing of Detroit - Toledo, OH - Fort Wayne, IN - Indianapolis - Evansville, IN - Paducah, KY - Memphis - Hot Springs - Shreveport - Houston (Hobby Airport).

[14] By 1972, TI was operating daily DC-9 jet service from Los Angeles (LAX) to Hot Springs via intermediate stops in Albuquerque and Dallas (Love Field).

In 1967, Frontier was flying nonstop to Fort Smith and Little Rock with direct service being operated to Kansas City, Omaha and Denver.

[18] Texas International was also operating a Saturdays only DC-9 jet flight on a one way routing of Austin, TX - Dallas/Fort Worth - Hot Springs - Little Rock at this same time according to the OAG.

Rio previously flew Beechcraft 99 turboprops nonstop to Dallas/Fort Worth and Memphis and Lone Star operated Dornier 328 propjets on the DFW route as well.

The current provider, Southern Airways Express, began service in March 2017 with nonstop flights to DFW using single engine Cessna 208 Caravan aircraft.