JetBlue CEO says flight bookings for holiday season have not yet been hurt by rising Covid cases

JetBlue has not yet experienced a decline in demand for flights around the upcoming holidays despite increasing coronavirus cases across the US, CE Robin Hayes said Tuesday. “We continue to see a fair bit of interest for travel around the Thanksgiving and holiday period,” Hayes said. “You’ve got a lot of kids coming back from college. A lot of people are seeing friends and family they haven’t seen for a long time. ... We’ve been in a rising case count here for a couple weeks, and so far, we haven’t seen an impact on bookings.” Hayes’ comments Tuesday came after the airline reported Q3 results before the bell. Its loss per share of $1.75, excluding items, was better than the $1.96 analysts had forecast. Revenue of $492m surpassed estimates of $466m. Shares of New York City-based JetBlue closed down more than 5%. Earlier Tuesday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio urged the city’s residents not to travel outside of the state for the upcoming holidays. “Realize that by doing that, unfortunately, you could be putting yourself and your family in danger and also the risk of bringing the disease back here,” he said earlier Tuesday. De Blasio asked that those who do travel get tested for the coronavirus and comply with the state of New York’s policy that requires people to quarantine for 14 days if they arrived from states that have certain rates of infection. As of Tuesday, more than 40 states were on the quarantine list. Physical testing sites will be in operation at LaGuardia Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport around the holidays. “We want to make it easy and clear that anyone coming off a plane should immediately get tested as well,” de Blasio added.<br/>