Hawaiian Airlines CEO: Positive Impact Of Fuel And Strong Demand 'More Than Offsets' Capacity Issues

Airline stocks have come under intense pressure in the last couple of months due to concerns regarding demand, pricing and capacity. Mark Dunkerley, President And CEO of Hawaiian Holdings, Inc. HA, was on CNBC recently to discuss these concerns and their impact on the airline industry overall.

The Positives & Negatives

"We are in situation where the two real big movers of our businesses, our demand which remains robust certainly in all of the geographies that we operate in and the price of oil which...[has] been on the way down and it's certainly a lot lower than it was last year," Dunkerley said. "So, these are two really big positives and there seems to be some short-term concerns about supply or capacity."

Strong Demand And Lower Fuel Offsets Capacity Issues

Dunkerley was asked what Hawaiian is telling the analysts about its supply or capacity situation. He replied, "Well what we are saying is its steady as it goes. We have guided to up in the low single digits of capacity which broadly speaking reflects sort of U.S. GDP and then the GDP from some of the pacific rim countries that we operate out of and we think that's roughly the right level of capacity."

"We see industry capacity moving up a little bit percentage point up then it comes down a little bit. But in general we think that the positive impact of fuel and really strong demand in all the geographies, as I said that we serve, more than offsets these issues," Dunkerley said.