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go! Parent Company Plans To Stay In Islands

Mesa Expects To Fight Order To Pay $80 Million

POSTED: 7:08 am HST November 1, 2007
UPDATED: 7:31 am HST November 1, 2007

A day after a judgment which ordered Mesa Air Group to pay Hawaiian Air $80 million for misusing confidential information in a bankruptcy case, the parent company of go! Airlines, said it is in Hawaii to stay. Mesa Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Ornstein said his lawyers will appeal.

The company is digging in, vowing to stay in the Hawaii market.

The head of go! Airlines said he is not worried about paying the $80 million to Hawaiian. Ornstein said the company has $225 million in the bank.

There had been speculation that Mesa would pull out of the Hawaii market and focus on its growing market in China.

"It's a lot of wishful thinking on the people of Aloha (Airlines) and Hawaiian that we will go about away when their losses are 10 times than ours. Why don't they leave?" Ornstein said.

"The intention of go! is to drive competition out of business and then raise fares higher than what they have previously been," Hawaiian Airlines Chief Executive Officer Mar Dunkerly said.

Dunkerly said while Hawaiian's netted a profit in this third quarter, the company racked up losses over the previous three.

"You can't just look at the third quarter to say we are going to be successful year round. We still have work to do to cover out costs," he said.

"We are a low-cost high-quality producer. We deserve to win in a market place where we are competing with high fare low quality operators," Ornstein said.

Ornstein said go! may again offer discount fares, maybe even going back down to a dollar to show people they mean business.

Hawaiian said it will remain competitive to hold on to its customer base.

Meanwhile Ornstein said he is disappointed with the judge's order, but will fight it.

As for the status of George Peter Murnane, Mesa's chief financial officer who destroyed evidence while he claimed to be deleting pornography on his computer, it is clear where Ornstein puts the blame.

"It's outrageous to punish a company for one persons rogue act. I am not very happy with Mr. Murnane's actions at this time," Ornstein said.

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