For those of you who are followers of the ongoing Mesa Air Group/Hawaiian affair, I have a tidbit to share with you today.

And the most remarkable, ironic, or telling part of all this? (Take your pick.) It comes compliments of Mesa’s own website.

It can’t get much better than this guys.

Just a hint. If you want to see the pictures we’re talking about live, you’d better act fast, because I’m sure they will be removed pretty quickly. Then again, for those of you who aren’t quite as fast, don’t worry. We’ve made copies of the page, and the pictures. (We are posting all links below.)

But for those eager beavers who read this quickly enough, if you want to see what interesting thing we found today while scrolling the Mesa website, first, open your browser and go to the Mesa Air Group home page.

Scroll down to the section on the recent launch festivities involving Kunpeng Airlines, the regional joint venture created by Shenzhen Airlines and Mesa Air. Headline is “Kunpeng Airlines Launches Services in China.” Check out that fake fog while you’re at it. (Well it was around Halloween.)

Click on the link that says “MORE” in that section. It will bring up an entire page of full resolution photos. Not minimal JPG sizes. Oh, no, full resolution photographs. (That will become important here in a minute.)

The picture that caught our eye is on the next to the bottom row — one picture towards the right. It’s the one with the huge flower artwork on the wall behind a number of people seated at a long table.

Direct link to the photo.

When the photo is downloaded,  it is identified by the Mesa Air Group site with a moniker that includes  “Kunpeng Launch.” As you can see, it is in a group of other pictures that were clearly also of the various launch festivities. When did this particular occur? Well, the launch was officially Friday the 27th of October. So, it could have been the 26th, the 27th or the 28th.

Now, here’s the point of my web adventure.

Look who’s seated next to Mesa CEO Jonathan Ornstein at the official event.

To his right — with, appropriately, an open laptop in front of him? (I know, at this point it’s becoming more and more like a skit from Saturday Night Live.)

While he seems to be somewhat pre-occupied with a napkin in the photo, and not what is on his laptop, there’s no question the person seated next to Jonathan is Peter Murnane. In fact, because the photo was uploaded in its full resolution — you can clearly make out his name on the little white name placeholder in front of him. George Peter Murnane III no less.

But wasn’t Peter on administrative leave from the company at the end of October?

A little historical perspective here for those who took a cruise to Alaska in October.

On Sept. 21, Mesa Air Group sent out a press release. In that release, it stated that the Board of Directors of the airline had put  Peter Murnane on “administrative leave.” In the press release, Mesa CEO Jonathan Ornstein said, “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.”

“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,” the release said.

As you recall, it was just a few days later that U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Faris ruled that Murnane had intentionally destroyed files that Mesa had used before launching its airline go! These files had been sought as part of the trial’s discovery process. This was the ruling that came after the porn-made-me-do-it defense by Murnane.

I’ll let all of you talk amongst yourselves about this. Goodness knows there is enough to chew on.

For those of you who didn’t go see what we saw today soon enough, here are the pertinent copies.

PDF of the page of Mesa’s Kunpeng launch pictures

Photo in question

Ticker: (MESA:Nasdaq)

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