On a wing and a prayer.

• Author: Bailey, David
• Position: CCAIR Inc.; Roy Hagerty - Cover Story - Cover Story

Flying lead on a nighttime medevac mission northwest of Da Nang, Roy Hagerty's chopper came out of the thick, low-lying clouds into a hailstorm of bullets from North Vietnamese troops.

He set his CH-46 down in a controlled crash not far from the wounded leathernecks he'd been sent to evacuate. While small-arms fire riddled the helicopter, he stripped the .50-caliber machine gun and ammunition and crawled to the sound of curses and moans.

"The Marines were all in a large [bomb] crater, and ... there were a lot of bodies in the bottom of the crater and people shot and wounded," Hagerty recalls. "And it was pretty much bedlam. Morale had gone to hell, and they were all crying and had their heads down."

A second lieutenant ran around, screaming and waving his .45 at the young Marines. 1st Lt. Roy Hagerty pulled rank. Immediately, he ordered the men to throw their dead down the hill. "Can you imagine being in a fighting position and standing on your own men?" he asks.

"I stood up and got on top of the ridge looking at them - and I was taking fire and I tried to inspire them and said, 'OK, let's go, get your heads up. Feel the fire."

When another medevac finally arrived, Hagerty stayed behind to coordinate the gunships hovering overhead, leaving only after reinforcements moved in the next morning. "I was flying again that afternoon," he says. You just do what you have to do."

For what Hagerty did that March night in 1969 President Nixon awarded him the Silver Star. The lessons he learned would serve him well in the years that followed. He found you can run a business the way you lead a combat unit: Be optimistic and confident. Inspire your people with that confidence. Attack problems head on. Be tenacious.

That's the way Roy Hagerty built Charlotte-based CCAIR Inc. and launched it on a dizzying growth curve. And, to a large degree, that's why his company and its squadron of 29 turboprops crash-landed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court last fall.

Again, Hagerty believes, he was brought down by hostile fire. Only this time, it came from an enemy that was supposed to be an ally: USAir Inc., the Arlington, Va.-based carrier that merged with Piedmont Airlines in August 1989. CCAIR had once flourished using Piedmont's reservation system, its logo and its wellspring of good will. But Hagerty couldn't cut the kind of deal with USAir that he had with Piedmont, a joint-operating agreement that provided the cash flow CCAIR needed to stay aloft.

During the month they wrangled over the agreement, USAir proved a tough negotiator, but Hagerty was determined to show the big airline he was tougher. "I was the point man," he says. "I charged the hill, I turned around, and nobody was behind me."

In its last quarter as Piedmont Express, serving 23 cities with 240 departures a day, CCAIR's operating income topped $800,000. One year later - six months after the merger and now flying as USAir Express it reported a $3.3 million loss. Under Chapter 11, it's been downsized, cutting a quarter of its flights and dropping three cities, including Jacksonville, N.C. In November, the board forced Hagerty, 46, to resign as the commuter airline's CEO.

He was by no means the only casualty. Almost one in three of CCAIR's 670 employees have lost their jobs. Stockholders who invested $9 million in July 89 stand to lose everything if the airline doesn't pull out of reorganization. Airports in cities where CCAIR is the only connection to Charlotte's hub - Greenville, Hickory, Rocky Mount and Winston-Salem in North Carolina alone - stand to suffer if the airline goes down.

Hagerty says he knows who's to blame. "I fell right on my own sword," he admits.

From '86 to '89, Hagerty and CCAIR were flying high. In a 1986 article, Commuter Air magazine dubbed it "the new darling of the Piedmont Commuter System." In March 1988, The Business journal of Charlotte called CCAIR "the cream of Piedmont Airline's commuters."

Piedmont made CCAIR what it is. And, if you ask Hagerty, USAir broke it.

"It was a partnership," Hagerty says of his relationship with Piedmont. "Maybe you have to go back years ago and think of when Piedmont was a local-service carrier and they were in the business of feeding the majors. They came from that background, knowing how important the feed was."

The value of the feed that CCAIR provided, says William D. Gardner, a former Piedmont vice president, "was money in the bank."

CCAIR's contribution to Winston-Salem-based Piedmont's bottom line, according to Gardner and a consultant Hagerty hired, was more than $50 million a year. That's why Piedmont "did everything in our best effort to work with him," says Gardner, who was director of commuters from 1985 to 1988. Even in good times, though, Roy Hagerty didn't make it easy.

"Roy's always looking for that firefight," Gardner says. "He's always looking up over the edge of the foxhole to see if there's someone shooting at him, and if he doesn't hear something zing past him, he'll stick his head up a little farther. And, you know, sooner or later, someone will take a shot at him."

It's been that way since May 1972, when he went into business with $3,000 borrowed from his twin brother, Gus. From the beginning, flying charters out of Atlanta, he ran his business by the seat of his pants. "I'd go for a day and not eat and that sort of business - had my car repossessed," Hagerty says.

When he needed money, he'd raise it from individuals, and partners and investors came and went. Little by little, he built up the charter service, sold a few planes on the side and started scheduling regular flights. By 1976, he had two planes and six flights a day - he did it all, took up tickets, loaded baggage and then climbed into the cockpit.

His Southeastern Commuter Airline shuttled passengers between Atlanta and two points south - Callaway Gardens, Ga., and Auburn, Ala., where he had his main office. By...