B6 reports weaker 1Q - wx caused revenue hit

[WorldTraveler]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/jetblue-announces-first-quarter-results-113000216.html

profit falls on reduced revenues

RASM was up 1%, CASM up 3%


B6's fuel cost was 4% higher than DL's.


B6 did a poor job of retaining revenue as a result of bad weather.


JetBlue reported record first quarter operating revenues of $1.3 billion despite severe winter weather in the Northeast. JetBlue cancelled 4,100 flights during the quarter, which reduced revenue by an estimated $50 million and reduced operating income by approximately $35 million. Revenue passenger miles for the first quarter increased 1.8% to 8.7 billion on a capacity increase of 2.7%, resulting in a first quarter load factor of 83.1%, a decrease of 0.8 points year over year.

 

[WorldTraveler]

a few tidbits from B6's earnings transcript on Seeking alpha

"...salaries, wages and benefits were up approximately 50% on a unit cost basis, the largest driver of our year-over-year increase in non-fuel unit costs. Recall, we recently increased our pilot paydays rate and have hired additional pilots to help mitigate the impacts of FAR 117, which is the FAA's new regulation regarding pilot flight time and duty rules.

and this statement which says B6 is researching charging for bags as part of fare bundling

Robin Hayes - President
"I mean, if I can just build on that premise, David, I mean, I do think that it is a good question and it's sort of the heart of our model. I do think that the -- it kind of went a little bit unnoticed, but -- I mean, we look at the investment that we made in our partnership with Datalex to be very significant in this area in what it's going to enable us to do in the future. We've also made insignificant investments in Mosaic and our TrueBlue base to really create a larger group of customers who are flying more frequently. And those bring a lot more value to us just because of sort of the amount they spend, the amount of trips they're taking. So again, going back to Datalex, our ability to create a retail merchandising capability that's greatly superior to what we have today, to create bundled offerings, which aren't necessarily going to look like the low-cost goods. But certainly, it will allow us to monetize not just some of the product offerings we have today, but maybe take advantage of things that we don't today. We asked a lot about the first bag fee. Our hesitance around that in the past has been we believe that in many of our markets we get a significant fare premium because we don't charge a bag fee and customers certainly take that into the fares. But in a wide way we can start to give customers bundled offerings and choices that allows us to -- if you like, protect the fare where we're seeing -- and in the fare but maybe go after our opportunities like first bag, where maybe today we don't do that. I think the investment in Datalex we're going to start seeing into the early part of next year allows us to do that. So I'm very excited about what's that going to drive. And I anticipate and believe that's going to allow us to significantly enhance some of our ancillary offerings, particularly around things like first bag into next year."

there are a lot of analyst questions about the pilot vote and what it might mean to B6 but there is too much there to quote... it is worth reading... and yes, Kev, the little d word is there multiple times.

 

[Kev3188]

Well of course it is, along with all of the other usual boilerplate lingo...