Carrier route record
B6ATL→JFK
JetBlue Airways · Atlanta to New York
- Flights
- 1,080
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 25%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with JetBlue Airways.
JetBlue on ATL to JFK carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,080 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 2,448 at 79.7% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so JetBlue on ATL to JFK runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 70 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,031 completed flights
Avg delay
100 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.26%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.3%
Every carrier on ATL to JFK, 4,263 flights
These figures cover 1,080 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
JetBlue against every carrier on ATL to JFK
JetBlue flew 1,080 of the 4,263 flights on ATL to JFK, about 25% of it. Its 70.6% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 79.7% to Frontier at 67.1%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 79.7% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 67.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 735 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 2,448 | 79.7% | 75 min | 1.51% | B |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 1,080 | 70.6% | 100 min | 4.26% | C− |
| Frontier Airlines | 735 | 67.1% | 79 min | 2.31% | C |
The spread between Delta and Frontier is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
JetBlue flight numbers on ATL to JFK
Departure window
When JetBlue runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 33 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am246 flights85.2%
- 8am–11am114 flights76.6%
- 11am–2pm286 flights71.7%
- 2pm–5pm119 flights64.9%
- 5pm–8pm261 flights59.3%
- 8pm–5am54 flights51.9%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 51.9% on time, against 85.2% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 286 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on ATL to JFK through the year
December is the weak month at 54.7% on time, against 82.0% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. November was the busiest month here, with 119 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.3%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why JetBlue runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 30,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 30,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 45 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 30,342 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 11,000 of the 30,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.26%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 760 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 68.3% on time across 1,079 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,080 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking JetBlue on ATL to JFK
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.26% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,031 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to JFK, every carrier
- JetBlue on JFK to ATL, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on ATL to JFK79.7%
- Frontier Airlines on ATL to JFK67.1%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.