Carrier route record
B6BNA→JFK
JetBlue Airways · Nashville to New York
- Flights
- 541
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 37%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with JetBlue Airways.
JetBlue on BNA to JFK lands a B−, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 541 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate JetBlue on BNA to JFK from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 514 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.81%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.0%
Every carrier on BNA to JFK, 1,470 flights
These figures cover 541 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% 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 BNA to JFK
JetBlue flew 541 of the 1,470 flights on BNA to JFK, about 37% of it. Its 76.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 77.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 77.1% to JetBlue at 76.7%.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 929 | 77.1% | 67 min | 3.77% | B− |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 541 | 76.7% | 63 min | 4.81% | B− |
Flight by flight
JetBlue flight numbers on BNA 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 38 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am149 flights91.5%
- 8am–11am103 flights82.8%
- 11am–2pm132 flights79.2%
- 2pm–5pm109 flights57.4%
- 5pm–8pm48 flights53.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.2% on time, against 91.5% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 149 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on BNA to JFK through the year
July is the worst month at 55.8% on time, 38 points below March, the best at 93.8%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 67.1%. 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. National Airspace System accounts for 45% of the 7,596 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%National Airspace System
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
40% 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 7,596 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 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 7,596 reported delay minutes.
45% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 3,443 minutes out of 7,596, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 4.81%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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. 9.3% 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 765 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.3% on time across 539 flights, 5 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 541 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 BNA to JFK
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.81% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; 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. 514 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BNA to JFK, every carrier
- JetBlue on JFK to BNA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on BNA to JFK77.1%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.