If Steven Spielberg were to make a movie of the SkyWest Airlines story, he would probably open the film with the March 1, 1994, launching of SkyWest's new Canadair Regional Jet aircraft at Salt Lake International Airport.
The script might go something like this: Harrison Ford, in the role of Jerry C. Atkin, the airline's chairman, president and chief executive officer, takes the podium as the new 50-passenger jet rolls up to the gate. The camera zooms in on his face as he gazes reflectively out over the crowd. An ironic smile forms on his lips as he remembers how it all began. . . .Flashback to June 1972. Ralph C. Atkin, Jerry's uncle (played by Jeff Bridges), and five other men are standing around a small hangar at the St. George airport, perhaps the only airport in the world located on the edge of a cliff.
The men, all members of a small, local flying club, are discussing the fact that Dixie Airlines has once again gone out of business and this time it's for good. That means Salt Lake City is a five-hour drive and an overnight stay from St. George. Not good.
The six men agree that their little southern Utah community badly needs scheduled air service to the state's capital city and it is up to them to make it happen. They decide to buy Dixie Airline's business certificate, its on-site fuel tank (nearly empty) and a six-seat Piper Seneca airplane.
The audience realizes it is witnessing the birth of an airline.
The business plan of the founders is simple: Their airplane will take off from St. George at 7 a.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, make a stop in Cedar City, then take the passengers - all six of them - on to Salt Lake City where the pilot will cool his heels until the commuters have completed their day's work. At 5 p.m. the plane will take off on the return flight.
For an hour and 50 minutes and only a modicum of dramatic license, the film makes clear that the road to glory in the airline biz is a very bumpy ride. The airline flirts with bankruptcy in the early '70s. A tragic midair crash with a private plane in 1987 over a Salt Lake suburb shocks the company to the core.
In the late '80s, SkyWest starts doing its bookkeeping with red ballpoints. The owners recall the fate of Dixie Airlines. In 1992 the company undergoes a reorganization that includes some painful employee layoffs. Atkin vows to refocus the business strategy and increase profitability. The plan works and in 1993 logs record passengers, revenues and net income. The audience relaxes knowing the film has a happy ending.
Flashback to Jerry Atkin (Harrison Ford, remember?) on the podium. He tells the crowd that the new jet aircraft parked behind him is one of four just purchased by SkyWest. Another 10 have been ordered, and still another 10 are on option, each at a cost of $18 million.
"Why all the new planes? You guys made of money?" asks a grumpy old man in the crowd (Wilford Brimley doing a cameo as a favor to Spielberg).
"Why?" answers Atkin/Ford rhetorically. "Because the little St. George airline that could is now the large regional carrier that did.
"In 1993, our company generated record levels of passengers, operating revenues, and net income," says Atkin/Ford. "The market value of our stock topped $100 million this year for the first time. We have more than 500 departures a day and have become the 11th largest regional carrier in America and possibly the fastest growing. Does that answer your question, sir?"
Brimley slinks away muttering as the credits role. The audience cheers.
OK, so it's not "Schindler's List." It's not even "Jurassic Park." But, hey, Hollywood has built epics out of less gripping material. The rise of SkyWest Airlines is a dramatic story, even without being massaged by script writers.
Jerry Atkin - as played by himself, not Harrison Ford - wasn't one of the six men in that hangar in 1972, but he came on board only two years later. He recalls that the job almost ended before it began. The airline was losing money, and the owners had decided that their noble experiment had failed. They had tried fishing, now it was time to cut bait.
"We tried to sell it for $25,000 because we couldn't see any way out," recalls Atkin, "but nobody wanted it. Then we offered it to a guy for nothing, but he wouldn't take it. We were a bit discouraged."
So why didn't they just quit? "Pride, I guess," says Atkin. "The investment was more from the Atkin family than anyone else (brothers Ralph Atkin, Sidney J. Atkin and Lee C. Atkin remain on the board today), and we didn't just want to walk away."
Jerry recalls that the company then undertook "kind of a do-it-yourself Chapter 11" (bankruptcy reorganization). He became president and put together a plan to restructure the company, reduce costs and raise capital. Creditors were paid only $50 a month for the first year but eventually were paid in full.
"Nobody lost a dime; we paid it all back," said Atkin.
Today, SkyWest is making money at a time when most of the big carriers are not - net income for fiscal 1993 was $6.7 million or 85 cents per share, up from $2 million, or 25 cents per share for fiscal 1992.
But when Dallas-based Southwest Airlines acquired Salt Lake City-based Morris Air on Dec. 31, some speculated this might not bode well for SkyWest.
Not to worry, assures Atkin. "The short answer is we don't compete with Morris or Southwest so it doesn't have an impact on us. We serve smaller markets than they do."
Atkin notes that most regional carriers are doing better than the mega airlines. Why? He cites the advantages of flexibility. For example, he said, the major carriers came out of deregulation with imbedded cost structures, such as unionized employees. SkyWest is non-union.
Ironically, it is SkyWest's association with one of those majors, Delta Air Lines, that accounts for some of its success. SkyWest operates as The Delta Connection under a marketing agreement in which the two airlines coordinate their schedules and ticket booking. Also, SkyWest passengers participate in Delta's "Fantastic Flyer," "Senior Citizen" and other marketing programs. When a customers calls SkyWest for a reservation, it is a Delta agent who answers.
"But that's the only thing we rely on them to do," emphasized Atkin. "We do all of our own customer service, plane maintenance, pilot training and such."
Delta owns about 15 percent of SkyWest's 11.4 million outstanding shares of stock, which are traded on NASDAQ at around $38 per share, up from $10 (and a couple of splits) since the company went public in 1986.
The relationship with Delta is not unusual. Members of the Regional Airline Association (of which Atkin is chairman) carried 53 million people last year, 12 percent of the total scheduled air traffic, and 96 percent of them traveled on a regional carrier that has a marketing agreement with a major carrier.
Over the next three years, Atkin said, SkyWest will double the number of "seats" it flies, partly through adding new planes and partly by replacing existing 19-passenger craft with 30-seat Brazilia planes.
Although its headquarters remain in St. George, SkyWest has major maintenance operations in Salt Lake City and Palm Springs, Calif., and operates hubs in Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. It serves 45 cities from the Canadian to Mexican borders and from the Pacific Ocean to the Mississippi River - a warp-speed advance from the thrice-weekly run from St. George to Salt Lake City 22 years ago.
SkyWest Airlines is one of three companies operating under parent company SkyWest Inc. It provides about 83 percent of the company's revenues and profits. SkyWest Inc. also operates Scenic Airlines, a tour company that operates in the Grand Canyon/Four Corners area, providing 16 percent of revenues, and the Avis rental car agencies in St. George, Cedar City, Vernal, Ely, Nev; and Page, Ariz., providing about 1 percent.
The company currently has some 2,000 employees, including 500 pilots and 100 flight attendants.