(Photo Credit: Cindy Ellen Russell)

The day of reckoning for Mesa Air Group is here.

Hawaiian Airlines goes to court today in its effort to prove that Mesa Air Group used information that it obtained under a confidentiality agreement while Hawaiian was in bankruptcy – as a part of its competing regional airline start-up.

While the suit here has been moving along for more than a year — in the last two weeks, we’ve seen a couple of bombs land in this one and it would be safe to say that Mesa CFO Peter Murnane has been the target.

Murnane, who was already at the center of the Hawaiian complaint against Mesa, is now alleged by Hawaiian in a separate complaint of having deliberately “scrubbed” hard drives of pertinent information pertaining to the case. Three computers and a server (I would presume this was the Mesa Air Group server) were allegedly purged of information pertinent to Hawaiian’s complaint.

From recent filings, it appears Hawaiian has proof that Murnane sought advice on how to clean the hard drives in a way that it would not appear they had been tampered with.

In layman’s terms, it’s usually called “obstruction of justice” and is a felony.

In normal terms, it’s called, “Just Plain Stupid.” Oh and you can throw arrogant in there as well. (To think you can do this and get away with it.)

Over the weekend, we then saw Mesa trying to “distance” itself from Murnane, following the news last week that Murnane had hired a noted criminal defense attorney to represent himself in the proceedings.

I must admit, I had had a good chuckle at the release the airline issued on …Saturday. (Insert normal comment about “trying to bury the news” here.)

And I quote,

“The administrative leave will be for a period of up to 90 days, pending the Company’s completion of its review of this matter. The Company cannot predict the outcome of this investigation. Until the investigation is complete, William Hoke, Vice President of Finance will continue to be responsible for the financial and accounting functions of the Company and will perform the duties of Mr. Murnane.

Mr. Ornstein continued “Our policy is to comply with only the highest ethical standards of conduct and, if we become aware of a potential or alleged violation of such standards, to conduct an appropriate investigation and to take appropriate remedial action when warranted. We will report the outcome of the Company’s investigation as soon as it is completed.”

Uh-huh. Right.

I guess Mr. Ornstein thinks he can fool some people with this PR positioning blather, but I think most of us know that the ties between Murnane and Ornstein are thick, long, and wide.

We were told Monday that the “scrubbing” filing will probably not be the only surprise we may hear about as part of Hawaiian’s case against Mesa.

We’re all ears.

Great summary of all this mess at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

Ticker: (Nasdaq: Mesa), (NYSE: HA)

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