B6 had 85%LF for Oct

[lowecur]

This is an incredible number for October. Congrats to the folks at JBLU for those numbers.

 

[SpeedBird]

A surprising number considering that October is a "sleeper" month for traffic generally. Unlike the other reports from DAL & UAL which reduced capacity to increaase their LF numbers, JBLU was able to increase its LF while growing capacity over 50% YOY. With this strong showing for October, it looks like JBLU will easily break $1 Billion in revenues for 2003 and become the newest "major" carrier. A fantastic achievement for an airline that operates less than 50 airplanes.

Back in June, I mentioned that Song's impact on JBLU, if any, would start to show itself after the summer season when leisure traffic drops in September. Considering that the NY-FLA market still makes over 40% of JBLU's traffic base, it appears that Song is not growing its traffic base at the expense of JBLU. Since overall domestic traffic has been shrinking over the last two years, it means that the growth in LCC traffic (JBLU & Song in this case) is coming from somewhere else.