Carrier route record

B6BOS→JFK

JetBlue Airways · Boston to New York

Flights: 2,455
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 43%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with JetBlue Airways.

JetBlue on BOS to JFK carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.2% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four 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 2,455 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 368 at 90.8% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so JetBlue on BOS to JFK runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 40 extra late arrivals.

On time

73.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,351 completed flights

Avg delay

81 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.24%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.5%

Every carrier on BOS to JFK, 5,738 flights

These figures cover 2,455 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% 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 BOS to JFK

JetBlue flew 2,455 of the 5,738 flights on BOS to JFK, about 43% of it. Its 73.6% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 90.8% to JetBlue at 73.6%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 90.8% of the time; Republic Airways manages 75.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,915 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on BOS to JFK
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	368	90.8%	63 min	2.99%	A
Republic Airways	2,915	75.1%	66 min	5.01%	B−
JetBlue Airways (this page)	2,455	73.6%	81 min	4.24%	C−

Republic Airways cancels 5.0% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.

Flight by flight

JetBlue flight numbers on BOS 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 34 points, against 16 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am606 flights91.2%
8am–11am335 flights84.8%
11am–2pm436 flights74.3%
2pm–5pm343 flights64.9%
5pm–8pm472 flights56.8%
8pm–5am263 flights57.5%

Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.8% on time, against 91.2% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 606 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

JetBlue on BOS to JFK through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, February worst

February is the weak month at 61.4% on time, against 82.6% 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. September was the busiest month here, with 241 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.0%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why JetBlue runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 50,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
40%
National Airspace System
36%
Carrier
22%
Extreme weather
2%
Security
0%

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 50,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 19 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 50,299 reported delay minutes.

36% 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 18,000 minutes out of 50,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 4.24%, 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. 12.0% 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.

At 187 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 69.7% on time across 2,460 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 2,455 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.

What to do with this

Booking JetBlue on BOS to JFK

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.24% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over 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. 2,351 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures