J. Ralph Atkin, chairman of SkyWest Airlines, has retired from the position he has held since the St. George-based airline was founded in 1972.
Atkin said he will now devote more time to his responsibilities asco-director of the Utah Division of Business and Economic Development. He will also remain a director of SkyWest.
A St. George native, Atkin earned a law degree from the University of Utah College of Law in 1970. He later returned to St. George to establish a law practice. Two years later, Atkin and others bought bankrupt Dixie Airlines and renamed it SkyWest. The airline had one pilot and one aircraft, a Piper Seneca.
Though the fledgling airline struggled initially, it survived, and in the late 1970s as the industry changed under deregulation, SkyWest was in position to take advantage of new market opportunities throughout the western United States.
The growing regional company soon replaced Frontier, United, Western and Hughes AirWest in several Intermountain markets better suited to the 19-passenger Metroliner that SkyWest had acquired.
In 1984, SkyWest acquired Sun Aire Lines, based in Palm Springs, Calif., virtually doubling its size and allowing it access to the growing and highly-competitive Southern California market.
Needing capital, SkyWest went public in 1986. The new funding was used to buy the airline's first 30-passenger, cabin-class airplane, the EMB-120 Brasilia. That year SkyWest also began code sharing with Western Airlines. When Western was acquired a year later, SkyWest became the fourth "Delta Connection" affiliate.
Today, SkyWest serves 44 cities in eight western states with some 1,400 employees, a fleet of 49 aircraft and is among the largest regional carriers nationwide.