DALLAS (Bloomberg) — JetBlue Airways Corp. said second-quarter earnings rose 50 percent as it carried more passengers and flew its planes longer. The low-fare airline also slowed its growth for a second straight year.Capacity may rise by as little as 10 percent this year, down from a previous top projection of 14 percent, JetBlue said yesterday. JetBlue will sell three Airbus SAS A320 jets in 2007 and delay the addition of 16 Embraer E190s for as long as five years as it struggles to contain costs.

JetBlue's slowdown "was more a question of 'when' than 'if'," analyst Jamie Baker of JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York wrote in a note to investors. He rates the shares as "underweight".

Net income increased to $21 million, or 11 cents a share, last quarter from $14 million, or 8 cents, a year earlier, the New York-based airline said. Per-share earnings trailed the 12- cent average of 11 analyst estimates in a Bloomberg survey.

Sales climbed 19 percent to $730 million.

Chief executive officer Dave Barger began a review of JetBlue's fleet plans after the carrier cut its full-year profit forecast twice in the first four months of 2007. The new delivery schedule for the 16 E190s means JetBlue will get the 100-seat jets from 2013 to 2015, instead of 2007 through 2012.

The changes will reduce 2007 capacity growth to a range of 10 percent to 12 percent, compared with an earlier plan of 11 percent to 14 percent.

JetBlue trimmed growth plans twice in 2006, including delaying by four years the planned addition of 44 aircraft. JetBlue earlier said it expected to sell as many as five A320s this year, after unloading five in 2006. Operating profit met the company's June 20 forecast of 9 percent to 11 percent of sales. JetBlue's cost to fly each seat a mile, a measure of efficiency, rose 3.9 percent in the quarter. Revenue on the same basis increased 5.4 percent from a year earlier, falling within the 5 percent to 7 percent range JetBlue set last month.

JetBlue's average fare per mile increased 3.8 percent as passenger traffic grew 13.7 percent. The average time its jets flew each day rose 1.8 percent to 13.2 hours.

The airline's on-time performance, measured as planes arriving with 14 minutes of schedule, tumbled to 69 percent from 77.9 percent a year ago.

Barger took over in May from former CEO David Neeleman, who became non-executive chairman. The company shuffled management after losses in 2005 and 2006 and in the first quarter of this year, when New York storms wreaked havoc on JetBlue's operations.

Still, consumers in a J.D. Power & Associates survey from May 2006 to April 2007 gave JetBlue the highest ranking for the third year in a row for customer satisfaction among low-fare airlines in the US.