Motor City Air Raid

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Despite Pro Air's quick start, launching a discount airline is still a crapshoot. Since ValuJet Flight 592 plunged into the Everglades in 1996, consumers have equated low price with low quality. That's one reason Stamper bought new jets rather than going the cheaper route of purchasing older planes. But even new jets are vulnerable to fierce battles that the megacarriers can wage to stave off pesky start-ups. "Pro Air can take the approach of David and make us Goliath if they'd like," notes Marta Laughlin, a Northwest spokeswoman. "But the reality is, we're going to compete against them the same way we compete against the Deltas of the world."

Stamper relishes such tough talk. At 19, he was already a pilot. By his mid-20s, he was sharp enough to hold his own in dinner-table debates with his father, then a Boeing vice chairman. A day in the Stamper household might bring aviation honchos to the dinner table or even an irate call or two from powerful customers like Aristotle Onassis. Stamper says his seven-day, 126-hour workweeks will soon contribute to Pro Air's first quarterly profit and push the company further in its three-year plan to expand its fleet of 737s to nearly two dozen. Another of Stamper's ambitions: offer local investors a chance to own a $30 million stake in his scrappy start-up.

He will need the money. Northwest is likely to sharpen both its image and its pricing. "It's one thing to offer low prices in a city where prices are already unusually high," he says. "But we have to show passengers that we're 10%, 20% better in everything we do." Given the current mood of the flying public, that shouldn't be too difficult.