Carrier route record
B6BOS→PBI
JetBlue Airways · Boston to West Palm Beach
- Flights
- 1,583
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 73%
- 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 PBI carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,583 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so JetBlue on BOS to PBI runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 136 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,526 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.28%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
65.7%
Every carrier on BOS to PBI, 2,183 flights
These figures cover 1,583 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.4% 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 PBI
JetBlue flew 1,583 of the 2,183 flights on BOS to PBI, most of the route. Its 64.0% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 65.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 70.7% to American at 55.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 591 | 70.7% | 74 min | 2.37% | C |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 1,583 | 64.0% | 71 min | 3.28% | D− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 9 | 55.6% | 162 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Flight by flight
JetBlue flight numbers on BOS to PBI
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 24 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–8am297 flights79.8%
- 8am–11am182 flights72.2%
- 11am–2pm254 flights65.6%
- 2pm–5pm395 flights56.0%
- 5pm–8pm245 flights57.0%
- 8pm–5am210 flights56.2%
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 79.8% of the time, against 56.0% for the afternoon window. That is 24 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 395 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on BOS to PBI through the year
December is the weak month at 48.6% on time, against 87.3% 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. March was the busiest month here, with 188 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 74.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 50.2%. 24 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 43% of the 39,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
43% 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 39,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 38,756 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 79.8% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.28%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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. 15.4% 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 1,197 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 65.7% on time across 1,581 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,583 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 PBI
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.28% 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. 1,526 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.