JetBlue Airways shares rose more than five percent after the low-cost carrier reported its first third-quarter profit in two years as it added planes and packed them fuller with passengers.

But the carrier also said it will pull out of two cities and it reduced guidance for the remainder of the year.

"JetBlue appears to be guiding down on (unit revenue), never a healthy signal from an airline uniquely dependent on domestic operations," wrote JP Morgan Chase & Co. analyst Jamie Baker.

JetBlue's profit for the three months rose to $23 million, or 12 cents per share. One year ago, JetBlue lost $500,000, breaking even on a per-share basis.

Revenue increased to $765 million from $628 million a year ago. Plane occupancy grew 1.6 percentage points over the year-earlier period to 82 percent, while capacity jumped 10.9 percent.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial had expected earnings of seven cents per share on revenue of $767.4 million, on average.

For the year as a whole, JetBlue expects to report growth in passenger revenue per available seat mile, a measure of unit revenue, of between five percent and seven percent. That's down from an earlier estimate that unit revenue growth would be six percent to eight percent in 2007.

Through the first nine months of the year, JetBlue earned $22 million, or 12 cents a share, compared with a loss of $18 million, or 11 cents a share, through the first nine months of 2006. Revenue grew 22 percent to $2.1 billion over the first nine months from $1.7 billion during the same period last year.

Next January, JetBlue will drop service to Columbus, Ohio, and Nashville, Tennessee, and a flight connecting Fort Lauderdale, Florida to Oakland, California.

"These markets did not mature as well as we expected and we decided to ... redeploy our aircraft more profitably," said CEO Dave Barger in a conference call with analysts.