Mesa Air Group founder Larry Risley, 59, died of colorectal cancer on September 22 in Austin, Texas. A native of Abilene, Texas, Risley founded the airline in 1982 from the assets of a single-airplane charter service he started two years earlier. By the time he retired in 1998, Inc. magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year for 1991 had amassed a fleet of 135 aircraft flying under code-share arrangements with US Airways, America West and United Airlines.