NEW YORK – JetBlue Airways Corp. on Wednesday lowered its third-quarter earnings estimates despite a sharp jump in August traffic, citing the impact of two hurricanes in Florida and higher-than-expected fuel prices.
The Kew Gardens, N.Y.-based discount airline said August traffic surged to 1.53 billion revenue passenger miles from 1.17 billion a year ago. A revenue passenger mile is one paying passenger flown one mile.
Load factor, or the percentage of seats filled, fell to 89.3 percent from 91.6 percent last August, hurt by the effects of Hurricane Charley in Florida.
The company, one of the few U.S. airlines to remain profitable in recent quarters, said the hurricane that passed through in mid-August caused numerous flight delays and 50 cancellations.
JetBlue expects Hurricane Frances to hurt September operations. Frances, which caused 262 flights to be canceled, killed at least two people in the Bahamas and 14 in Florida and Georgia.
Concerns about a possible new hurricane have also resulted in weak near-term bookings, the airline said.
Though results are expected to be below its earlier expectations, JetBlue said it expects a solidly profitable third quarter.
JetBlue, based in New York’s JFK International Airport, operates more than 100 flights per day, serving 18 cities in nine states. Its 2003 revenue was $998.3 million.
For the first eight months of the year, JetBlue’s traffic rose 38 percent to 10.34 billion revenue passenger miles from 7.49 billion miles a year ago. Its load factor in the same period fell to 84.1 percent from 85.7 percent.
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