College dropout, stock market fanatic, motorcycle enthusiast and, on occasion, an uninhibited dancer to hip-hop music, the chief executive of the Mesa Air Group is a throwback to an era when airlines tended to resemble the personalities of their chief executives. And if his personality is outsize, so are Mesa?s ambitions. He wants to make the regional airline global. In December, Mesa announced it had formed a joint venture to start a regional airline in China, with plans to have 20 jets in service in time for the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008. And in June, Mesa began flying among the islands of Hawaii with a new subsidiary, Go, setting off a price war there.
See "Approach Boss With Caution", Jeff Bailey, The New York Times, January 18, 2007