Spirit Airlines is down over 10% this morning after reporting preliminary August traffic on Thursday. The company said August traffic increased 18.9% from a year ago, with capacity up 20.5%. Spirit said load factor for August was 1.2 points lower compared to August 2011 at 86.5%. Year-to-date, traffic is up 17.1% and capacity is up 17.8%. As previously disclosed, Spirit said 3Q11 RASM was 28.4% higher year-over-year primarily due to a demand increase resulting from the company's decision to pass on to its customers the full amount of the benefit realized from the federal excise tax. Due to the FET holiday effect in the year-ago period and the revenue impact of Hurricane Isaac in 3Q12, CEO Ben Baldanza now predicts that Q3 RASM will decline 2.5%-4.5% year-over-year. Baldanza said that Q3 total RASM would have been up year-over-year excluding the unusual items. The company says it is comfortable with its organic revenue growth trend. Raymond James this morning downgraded the stock to Market Perform from Outperform due to poor visibility and the earnings miss. Spirit Airlines is down $2.05, or 10.4%, to $17.61 in mid-morning trading.
The S&P 500 declined for a third day on Friday with the three major stock indexes posting their first negative …