Mesa Air Group fired its chief financial officer, Peter Murnane, whose destruction of evidence resulted in an $80 million judgement against go! airline's parent company.

Murnane generated embarrassing headlines for Phoenix-based Mesa after the company disclosed that he deleted confidential information about Hawaiian Airlines when he was trying to clean out pornographic material from his work computers.

The 49-year-old Murnane has been on administrative leave since September when Hawaiian accused him of destroying key evidence that would have shown that Mesa misused the confidential information to launch go! last year.

Yesterday, Mesa named Vice President of Finance William Hoke as interim chief financial officer.

Jonathan Ornstein, Mesa's chief executive officer, declined to disclose the financial terms of Murnane's separation.

But the company's general counsel, Brian Gillman, told the Arizona Republic that Murnane will not receive severance because his contract does not provide for such payments if he was fired for cause.

Murnane, a longtime friend of Ornstein's, earned $518,180 in total compensation last year, according to a Mesa filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Shares of Mesa Air Group dropped 10 cents to close at $4.54 on the Nasdaq market yesterday. Mesa's shares are down more than 30 percent since August, when Hawaiian Airlines first accused Murnane of destroying computer files.

Murnane's firing came less than a week after U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Faris ruled that the executive had intentionally destroyed crucial evidence in Hawaiian's lawsuit.

Ornstein said he plans to appeal Faris' ruling, calling the $80 million award "excessive."

"Our position is that the decision is incorrect," Ornstein said.

Murnane could not be reached yesterday and his attorney, Brook Hart, declined comment on Faris' specific findings. "It's an unfortunate incident I know he (Murnane) regrets," Hart said.

Since the June 2006 launch of go!, interisland airfares have fallen from about $79 to $39 and $29. At times, Mesa has offered fares as low as $19, $9 and $1.

The cheaper fares have helped stimulate traffic to the Neighbor Islands but the local carriers say they don't make any money when one-way fares go below $50.

Hawaiian and Aloha Airlines, the state's No. 2 carrier, said go!'s discounted fares are designed to drive its competition out of business so that go! could raise fares.

Aloha also is suing Mesa, and Murnane's conduct will likely play a central role in that litigation, which will go to trial next year.

In a 2005 e-mail to a Mesa consultant, Murnane stated that "we definitely don't want to wait for (Aloha) to die, rather we should be the ones who give them the last push."

Ornstein previously stated that the e-mail reflected Murnane's personal views and not that of Mesa.

He said that Mesa at one time had proposed a joint venture with Aloha when it was still in bankruptcy.

But the plan fizzled after Aloha Airlines was acquired in February 2006 by a group headed by California billionaire Ron Burkle.

Reach Rick Daysog at rdaysog@honoluluadvertiser.com.