Ed Beauvais had a not-so-secret tactic to rally the Little League team he coached for his sons, blasting Jerry Reed’s “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot” before games.

The unorthodox approach served him through a more than 40-year career in the aviation industry that saw him start three carriers and plant the seeds for what became the largest in the world, American Airlines.

“It...

Ed Beauvais had a not-so-secret tactic to rally the Little League team he coached for his sons, blasting Jerry Reed’s “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot” before games.

The unorthodox approach served him through a more than 40-year career in the aviation industry that saw him start three carriers and plant the seeds for what became the largest in the world, American Airlines.

“It tortured our opponents,” said his eldest son, Mark, of the pregame music that pumped up a team that his three brothers also played on. “It felt like a family.”

Mr. Beauvais, who died at home at the age of 84 on Sept. 28 following a heart attack, is best known for creating Phoenix-based America West Airlines in 1981, pioneering many of the features familiar on today’s low-cost carriers.

The talented high school athlete helped transform the industry in the 1980s by applying the collegiate approach of the sports field to the newly-deregulated airline industry.

America West started flying in 1983 and prospered with the help of feel-good labor relations that remain a rarity in the airline business.

Mr. Beauvais had entered the industry in 1960, when the government set fares and decided who flew what routes. Industry deregulation in 1978 gave him the opportunity to realize an idea that had been gnawing at him for years after spotting the potential of Phoenix, which had been underserved by other airlines and was about to enter a growth spurt.

“He wanted to make Phoenix the Atlanta of the Southwest,” said Mark Beauvais.

Deregulation spawned startups such as People Express and New York Air, sparking intense competition with established carriers.

“It became very combative. The saying was if you got all the airline CEOs and put them in a firing squad, they’d form a circle,” Mr. Beauvais said at a reunion of America West employees in 2012.

His eldest son was one of the first recruits as Mr. Beauvais raised $2 million in seed money locally and started with three rented Boeing Co. jets.

America West grew quickly, with costs pared by flight attendants also working as customer service representatives. It introduced one of the industry’s first yield-management systems, to maximize revenue by segmenting fares.

“He made you feel like you were an owner,” said Leslie Bohi, who spent 18 years at the airline in customer service and as a flight attendant, and who has organized employee reunions.

Ms. Bohi said Mr. Beauvais maintained an open-door policy, and recalled one Thanksgiving when she was surprised to find her CEO serving turkey to team members in an airport break room.

America West passed Southwest Airlines

as the largest carrier in Phoenix in its first year, growing a fleet that included jumbo jets flown to Hawaii and Japan.

However, the jump in oil prices triggered by the first Gulf war then ravaged the airline industry, and America West’s rapid growth left it vulnerable as mounting losses sent it on the first of two trips through the bankruptcy court.

Mr. Beauvais didn’t make it through the first, leaving the airline in 1992 on the same day as his son Mark, who had followed him into the business. The two worked together again to launch Colorado-based Western Pacific Airlines, with Ed Beauvais also starting Mountain Air Express to target the state’s ski tourism business.

America West continued under new management and became instrumental in the consolidation of the U.S. industry, first merging with US Airways and then American Airlines to create what remains the world’s largest carrier.

Edward Raymond Beauvais was born on Nov. 13, 1936 in Pueblo, Colo., the second of fraternal twins. His French-Canadian family had moved south before settling in Pueblo, home of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Corp. steel mill, where his father and grandfather worked.

A gifted athlete, Mr. Beauvais pitched with his dominant left hand and batted with his right. While drafted from high school by the Baltimore Orioles, he instead opted to use his 6-foot frame as an offensive lineman after winning a scholarship to St. Joseph’s College in Indiana.

After two years, he transferred to Regis University in Denver to be near his wife-to-be, Mary Ellen Talbow, whom he had met at his high school batting cages during his senior year.

The two were married in 1957, and after a spell working in the accounting office of his hometown steel mill, he took an opportunity in the finance department of Frontier Airlines before moving to Las Vegas-based Bonanza Airlines, which later shifted its operation to Phoenix.

Another airline merger moved the family to Burlingame, in the shadow of San Francisco International Airport, where he worked before forming his own aviation consultancy and starting the path that led to America West’s creation.

Family members helped out with the airline, with his wife helping decorate an airport lounge and his daughter Cathy working as a customer service rep, starting a career that would take her to NetJets, the private jet operator. Paul, another son, helped with marketing through his work at an ad agency.

Mr. Beauvais is survived by his wife of 64 years, Mary Ellen Beauvais, five children, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, as well as his brother George.

Write to Doug Cameron at doug.cameron@wsj.com