(FORTUNE Magazine) – Though not the media figure his partner Peter Ueberroth is, J. Thomas Talbot, 53, has set himself a Ueberroth-style challenge. He and the former baseball commissioner are plunking down $22 million to take over Hawaiian Airlines, and Talbot, who will be CEO, has pledged to get the chronic money loser into the black within a year. With an aging fleet and poor on-time record, Hawaiian lost $9 million on $354 million in revenues last year and another $13 million in the first half of 1989. It is up against tough rival Aloha Airlines in the inter-island trade and American, United, and other large carriers on routes to the U.S. mainland and the South Seas. Ueberroth, 52, is equally optimistic. He says his longtime golfing buddy ''is potentially the best airline executive in America.'' An attorney and former Air Force captain, Talbot helped launch Air California in the late 1960s and Jet America in the early 1980s. Alaska Air Group bought Jet America for $32 million in 1986, and Talbot has spent the past three years looking for the right opportunity to parachute back into the business. He teamed with Ueberroth to make an unsuccessful bid for Eastern Air Lines last spring before they set their sights on jetting to the Pacific.