American (AAL) - Get Report CEO Doug Parker said most investors don't understand what is happening in the airline industry, which is why American is aggressively buying back stock.

"In the almost 30 years now that I've been in this business, I can't remember a bigger disconnect between what we're seeing in our airline and in our forward prospects and how the market is treating our stock," Parker said Friday on the carrier's fourth-quarter earnings call.

It is a mystery to many, as well as to Parker, why when airlines are posting record profits and oil prices are low (American said Friday that it will save $2 billion on fuel this year), airline shares are slumping.

Shares in every major airline are down this year. Of the four biggest airlines, American is the best performer; shares closed Friday at $38.99, down 8% year to date. The other three are down 13% to 16%. Among the nine major airlines, the best performer is Hawaiian, down 0.34% year to date. The S&P 500 is down 5%.

In 2015, American bought back $3.6 billion in stock including $1.1 billion in the fourth quarter. Share buybacks will continue. "We continue to believe they're a really good value," Parker said. "We are bullish about the prospects here.

"The airline is throwing off a lot of cash {and} the market cap doesn't seem to be anywhere close to what the airline's generating cash, so we'll use the excess cash to repurchase shares and that will be a good thing for our investors as we move forward," Parker said.

Parker seemed mildly perturbed about the direction of Friday's call. JPMorgan analyst Jamie Baker had questioned why "the implementation of the Q1 guide is that every single dollar of year-on-year fuel savings in the first quarter is going to be handed back to employees and passengers" in the form of higher wages and lower ticket prices.

In a note, Baker wrote that in the fourth quarter American retained 16% of its year-over-year fuel savings, while United and Delta retained 45%. Baker said American attributes the gap to rising labor costs, Dallas competition, the lack of a revised credit card agreement and weakness in Brazil's economy, but he nevertheless is reconsidering his previous expectation that American could eclipse Delta's margins.

"We are increasingly concerned by a business plan at American that seems un-phased and unaltered despite continued RASM malaise and paltry fuel retention metrics," Baker wrote.

During the call, Parker seemed to address Baker's concerns when he answered another analyst's question: "I think this call so far is indicative of what we're hearing {from investors and analysts} ... the fares are down because fuel prices are down and you're paying your employees more.

"It feels a lot to me anyway like focusing on the trees instead of the forest," Parker said. "The reality is we are producing record profits" as well as higher margins than peers. So "if you went and built a model that said everything that happens in fuel price is going to result in higher earnings you, of course, are going to be disappointed."

Ticket prices don't exist in a vacuum. They fall when fuel prices fall, Parker said. Additionally, he said, airline employees want to restore the compensation cuts that were made during a time of a weak economy, high fuel costs and airline bankruptcies.

"It all feels good to us, we are really, really bullish and like I said, never seen a bigger disconnect," he said. "We are throwing off excess cash and we'll use that to buy back our shares at these low rates. There are investors who get it and we think they'll do well."

This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.