William Augustus Franke (born April 15, 1937) is an airline investor and a co-founder and Managing Partner of
Indigo Partners LLC, a private equity fund focused in air transportation. He has been the President at Franke and Company, Inc. since 1987. Franke has been Chairman of
Wizz Air since 2004, and serves as Chairman of
Frontier Airlines
Frontier Airlines is a major ultra-low-cost U.S. airline headquartered in Denver, Colorado. It operates flights to over 100 destinations throughout the United States and 31 international destinations, and employs more than 3,000 staff. The ca ...
. He also serves as the President and Chairman of Bristol Group SA.
Education and early career
Franke graduated from
Stanford University with a BA in History in 1959 and an LL.B. in Law in 1961. In his early career he was the CEO of a
''Fortune'' 500 forest products company, Southwest Forest Industries (now
Smurfit-Stone Container) and Chairman of
Circle K, which he restructured through bankruptcy. He was Chairman and CEO of
America West Airlines from 1993 to 2001, Chairman of
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
-based
Tiger Airways
Tiger Airways Singapore Pte Ltd, operating as Tigerair, was a budget airline headquartered in Singapore. It operated services to regional destinations in Southeast Asia, Bangladesh, Taiwan, China and India from its main base at Singapore Changi ...
from 2004 to 2009, and Chairman of
Spirit Airlines from July 2006 to August 2013.
Philanthropy
He was awarded an honorary doctorate from
Northern Arizona University in 2008 where, following a $25 million donation, The W. A. Franke College of Business was named after him. In 2016 he made a donation of $24 million to the
University of Montana. He has also donated to his alma mater
Stanford Law School
Stanford Law School (Stanford Law or SLS) is the law school of Stanford University, a private research university near Palo Alto, California. Established in 1893, it is regarded as one of the most prestigious law schools in the world. Stanford La ...
to create The W. A. Franke Professorship in Law and Business. In 2021, he donated $25 million to the
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. ...
to be put towards scholarships, housing stipends, and study abroad programs for honors students; the Honors College was thus renamed the W.A. Franke Honors College.
References
Further reading
*
1937 births
Living people
Stanford University alumni
Stanford Law School alumni
Businesspeople in aviation
People from Bryan, Texas
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