NEW YORK, April 28 2015 – JetBlue Airways earned net income of $137 million in the first quarter, a significant improvement over a net profit of $4 million in the 2014 March quarter, citing “healthy demand across our network and a continued focus on cost control.”
First-quarter revenue rose 13 percent year-over-year to $1.52 billion while expenses declined 2.9 percent to $1.27 billion, producing an operating profit of $253 million, a more than six times improvement over operating income of $41 million in the prior-year period.
The New York-based carrier’s first-quarter traffic rose 11.1 percent year-over-year to 9.62 billion RPMs on a 9.6 percent lift in capacity to 11.42 billion ASMs, producing a load factor of 84.3 percent, up 1.2 points. Yield was up 3.1 percent to 14.64 cents.
JetBlue reported $129 million in year-over-year fuel cost savings in the March quarter.
“JetBlue has hedged approximately 20 percent of its second quarter 2015 projected fuel requirements using a combination of jet fuel swaps and collars,” the airline stated.
“Based on the fuel curve as of April 20th, JetBlue expects an average price per gallon of fuel, including the impact of hedges and fuel taxes, of $2.11 in the second quarter. For the balance of the year beyond the second quarter, JetBlue has hedged approximately 14 percent of projected fuel consumption.”
