JetBlue traffic rose 7 percent in August

NEW YORK

JetBlue Airways Corp. said on Friday that its August traffic rose 7 percent.

The discount airline said it flew 2.74 billion revenue passenger miles in August, up from 2.56 billion a year earlier. A revenue passenger mile is one paying passenger flown one mile.

Capacity increased a little faster -- up 7.3 percent to 3.17 billion available seat miles, from 2.96 billion a year earlier.

Because JetBlue added capacity faster than travel increased, its planes weren't quite as full. Load factor fell 0.2 percentage points to 86.4 percent.

For the first eight months of the year, traffic rose 7.9 percent to 19.09 billion revenue passenger miles.

Capacity rose 6.3 percent to 23.48 billion available seat miles. Load factor rose 1.2 percentage points to 81.3 percent.

JetBlue shares fell 8 cents to $5.65 in afternoon trading.