JetBlue shows modest gains in revenue and traffic during April

JetBlue Airways Corp. said Thursday that passenger traffic in April rose 4.7 percent from a year ago, helped by an increase in capacity.

The New York-based airline’s preliminary revenue passenger miles, or how many miles all paying passengers flew during the month, totaled 3 billion, up from 2.86 billion in the same month last year.

Capacity increased 6.5 percent to 3.58 billion available seat miles from 3.36 billion a year ago.

Load factor — how full the planes were — edged down 1.5 percentage points to 83.7 percent.

For the year-to-date, revenue passenger miles increased 6.8 percent to 11.5 billion, while available seat miles rose 6.4 percent to 13.72 billion. Load factor rose 0.3 percentage points to 83.8 percent.

JetBlue shares added 13 cents, or 2 percent, to $6.78 in afternoon trading.

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