Hawaiian Airlines' parent company, facing a pivotal time in the company's history with the transition to a new fleet of aircraft and international expansion, has awarded President and Chief Executive Officer Mark Dunkerley with a three-year contract extension and a 3 percent wage increase that will immediately boost his annual salary to approximately $597,400.

Total compensation for the 46-year-old Dunkerley will be detailed in the next few days in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Hawaiian Holdings Inc. said yesterday.

“;I am privileged to work with an outstanding management team and the industry's best employees,”; Dunkerley said. “;I'd like to thank our board of directors for their continued support of me and the direction we are taking the company.”;

Dunkerley, whose contract was due to expire in November, had been earning a salary of $580,000 before the upgrade. He had total compensation in 2009 of just more than $1.8 million, according to the proxy filing that Hawaiian filed in March of this year.

For 2008, Hawaiian initially reported Dunkerley's total compensation as nearly $3.3 million, but Chief Financial Officer Peter Ingram said yesterday that total was amended in the recent proxy filing to reflect a change in how the SEC wants to account for stock awards. They are now recorded in the year they are granted instead of the year they are expensed. So Hawaiian now lists Dunkerley's 2008 compensation as $1.8 million ($37,215 higher than in 2009) and has moved the stock awards designation to his 2007 compensation, giving him total compensation for that year of $5.5 million instead of $2.3 million.

Hawaiian Holdings Chairman Lawrence Hershfield said yesterday that Dunkerley's leadership “;through some extraordinary times has been exemplary.”;

“;The board is pleased that he will continue to lead our company through key phases of expansion in the coming months,”; Hershfield said.

Hawaiian, which received delivery of its first Airbus A330 earlier this month, will begin service between Honolulu and Los Angeles with the 294-seat Airbus beginning next Friday.

With the arrival of the A330—the first of three scheduled to arrive this year—Hawaiian will begin a decade-long transition to phase out its Boeing 767s. When the makeover is complete, Hawaiian could have as many as 27 new Airbus aircraft.

Hawaiian also is still awaiting final word from the U.S. Department of Transportation on the airline's request for the DOT to reconsider its ruling that temporarily granted Hawaiian one of two sought-after slots for daily service between Honolulu and Tokyo's Haneda Airport starting in October. Hawaiian says it deserves both slots, which if granted would mean that the DOT would have to take away a tentative mainland-Haneda slot granted to another U.S. carrier.

The airline has been the No. 1-rated carrier in the nation for overall service quality and performance for three of the last four years, according to the annual Airline Quality Rating study.