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High-margin premium services have remained resilient, with affluent travelers continuing to pay extra for added comfort, while carriers have trimmed capacity on domestic routes to cut costs. Sign up here. "We are optimistic the demand environment will continue to improve through the end of the year," said Marty St. George, JetBlue's president. Rising costs have forced the carrier to tighten spending by exiting unprofitable routes, deferring aircraft deliveries and pausing cabin upgrade plans. The New York-based airline said it expects fourth-quarter unit revenue, a key measure of pricing power, to be flat to down as much as 4% from a year earlier, when strong demand had driven fares higher. JetBlue, which operates an all-Airbus fleet, narrowed the range of its 2025 forecast for unit costs excluding fuel to 5%-6%, from a 5%-7% rise earlier. It reported an adjusted loss of 40 cents per share in the quarter through September, a tad smaller than Wall Street's expectations of 44 cents according to data compiled by LSEG. The airline's quarterly total operating revenue was $2.32 billion, in line with analysts' expectations. By end-2027, the airline expects to report an earnings before interest and taxes, or operating profit, of $800 million to $900 million. Reporting by Nandan Mandayam in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri
