Team honors Craig Field Airport CEO, former fighter pilot with name on vintage aircraft

Jim Corrigan was one of the last U.S. Air Force pilots to serve at Craig Air Base in 1977. Now he runs its civilian variant, Craig Field Airport in Selma.  

In honor of his service at Craig in uniform and as a civilian, Corrigan’s name now appears on the side of the vintage jet, an F-80 Shooting Star or its training variant the T-33, that stands guard at the gate.  

Team member Dondi Fikes said under Corrigan and his second in command, Dan Lane, Craig Field is “open for business.” As the crew was cleaning around the airplane displayed at the gate, they decided to honor their boss by placing his name on the jet, a common practice among military pilots. 

Now above the U.S. Air Force letters on the side of the jet, it reads, “Col. Jim ‘Lucky' Corrigan.”  

Corrigan retired as a colonel. Lucky was his fighter pilot call sign, like Maverick in the movie “Top Gun.” (Yes, we know Maverick was in the Navy, not the Air Force.) 

As for how he got the call sign Lucky, Corrigan said,“There are two stories.One is classified, and one is not. But every fighter pilot has a call sign based on something that happened when they were flying airplanes.”  

Corrigan’s history at Craig goes back to the mid-1970s. Craig Air Force Base was a training base for fighter pilots at that time, and Corrigan graduated from flight school at Craig in October 1976.  

Corrigan said, “Every class that graduated painted the (display) plane a different color. I think we painted it white.”  

The Air Force made him an instructor pilot, and he said he had the last classroom. “Then I came back and flew some of the aircraft out to other bases” when the base closed, he said.   

After serving 23 years in the Air Force and 21 years at Delta Airlines as a captain, Corrigan came back to Craig Field in 2019 to be the CEO of the now civilian airport and the adjoining industrial park. 

He thanked his team for the honor, but mainly for their work.  

“I appreciate everyone here who has helped get this place back together,” Corrigan said. 

Through a strong partnership with Wayne Vardaman, executive director of the Selma-Dallas County Economic Development Authority, and a strong team of employees at Craig Field, Corrigan is spearheading a major revival of the airfield aimed at bringing industry to the area. 

The revival of Craig includes attracting Advanced ATC Academy, an air traffic control school and Resicum, which is making Craig a tactical training hub. Several companies have locatedat the Craig Industrial Park. Colclasure Enterprises, a manufacturer of plastic pipe, announced an expansion last week.  

When he first came back to Selma in 2019, he told the Selma Sun he had planned to play golf and travel, but “when this job came open, my wife and I said we’re in this to make Selma a better place.”  

And with his team at Craig Field, he is doing just that.