Maurice J. Gallagher, Jr.

Maurice J. Gallagher Jr., also known as Maury Gallagher, is a commercial airline entrepreneur and current CEO and Chairman of Allegiant Air. Prior to Allegiant, he co-founded and invested in WestAir and ValuJet. He is also the founder of several non-aviation businesses in the telecommunications and adaptive learning fields. He is also the owner of the NASCAR Xfinity Series and NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series racing team GMS Racing.

Gallagher is an alumnus of UC Davis where he endowed a chair in the name of him and his wife. The university also has a named hall for Gallagher, referred to as the Maurice J. Gallagher, Jr. Hall.

Gallagher attended UC Davis where he received his Bachelor of Arts in history in 1971. He went on to UC Berkeley where he received his MBA in 1974.

Aviation career

Gallagher was a founder of WestAir, which operated from 1978 through 1992. He served as Vice President-Finance of the parent company of WestAirCommuter Holdings, Inc. from 1979 until 1982. From 1983 until August 1992, he served as an executive and director of WestAir Holding, Inc. until the company was acquired by Mesa Air in May 1992. WestAir functioned as the west-coast commuter/regional airline affiliate of United Airlines. Gallagher also was a member of the investment group that founded ValuJet Airlines, Inc. (one of the predecessors to AirTran Airways, Inc.) and served as a board member of ValuJet from its inception in 1993 until 1997.

Gallagher is known today as the CEO and Chairman of Allegiant Travel Company, and its major subsidiary, Allegiant Air. Gallagher was the major creditor of the then small, Fresno-based scheduled airline in 2000 when it declared bankruptcy. He gained control of the airline as a result of the bankruptcy and later became CEO and Chairman. The airline changed headquarters to Las Vegas and eventually changed its business model of flying older large commercial aircraft from small cities around the US to large leisure destinations (initially Las Vegas, later Orlando, Phoenix, St Petersburg, Fort Lauderdale and other cities).

Telecommunications and adaptive learning

Gallagher has been involved other entrepreneurial activities, not all of them aviation-related. For instance, in between his time at ValuJet and Allegiant, he founded and had leadership positions at Mpower Communications, a CLEC that went public in 1998.

Motorsports

Outside of airlines, he is also known for owning GMS Racing, an American professional NASCAR team that currently races in the Gander Outdoors Truck Series. Originally built in order to further extend his son Spencer's racing career in ARCA, it has since becoming one of the major teams in Truck Series and Chevrolet's current flagship Truck team, with driver Johnny Sauter winning the Truck Series championship for GMS in 2016.

Gallagher has made two prominent donations to the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. The first was for an endowed chair in the name of him and his wife, the second was a $10 million donation which prompted the school to name its new building the Maurice J. Gallagher, Jr. Hall. In 2011, Gallagher gave the commencement address for the UC Davis business school.