It could not have been a better time for JetBlue Airways Corporation (NASDAQ:JBLU) to report a doubling in profit. One of the main reasons for it was the significant drop in oil prices. A few other metrics like revenue passenger miles and capacity growth along with load factor also helped to post earnings five cents a share higher than expectations. The company also provided an upbeat forecast for capacity for the first quarter and the full year.

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Yield per Mile Down

JetBlue Airways Corporation (NASDAQ:JBLU) reported net income of $190 million, which was more than double the $88 million a year ago. Similarly, earnings per share also jumped to 56 cents from 26 cents. Its pre-tax margin jumped 9.3 points to 19.0%. Revenue grew 10.2% to $1.59 billion in the fourth quarter, which was also higher than the Capital IQ estimation of $1.57 billion.

The airline firm’s revenue passenger miles advanced 12.4% to 10.6 billion with the help of a 10.4% growth in the capacity. The company indicated that its load factor rose 1.5 points to 83.6% in the December quarter. However, yield per passenger mile slipped 3.6% to 13.62 cents whereas passenger revenue per available seat mile fell 1.9% to 11.39 cents. Similarly, operating revenue per available seat mile slackened 20 basis points to 12.62 cents.

Guidance For Q1 and Full Year

Moving ahead, JetBlue expects capacity to grow in the range of 14% – 16% in the first quarter. For the full year, the airliner sees a growth of 8.5% to 10.5%. The company indicated that severe winter weather was causing a considerable number of cancellations this quarter. As a result, growth pace in capacity as scheduled.

JetBlue also sees change in CASM, which excluded fuel as well as profit sharing. As a result, the company sees a 0 to -2% in the first quarter compared to last year. CASM is likely to witness a growth of 0% – 2% for the full year 2016.