Carrier route record

B6BOS→TPA

JetBlue Airways · Boston to Tampa

Flights: 1,576
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 56%
Carriers: 4

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

JetBlue on BOS to TPA sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,576 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate JetBlue on BOS to TPA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

74.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,522 completed flights

Avg delay

67 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.86%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.8%

Every carrier on BOS to TPA, 2,822 flights

These figures cover 1,576 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.0% 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 TPA

JetBlue flew 1,576 of the 2,822 flights on BOS to TPA, most of the route. Its 74.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 74.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 79.4% to American at 37.5%. Two 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.

On-time performance by carrier on BOS to TPA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	69	79.4%	69 min	1.45%	B
Delta Air Lines	1,168	75.7%	78 min	1.97%	B
JetBlue Airways (this page)	1,576	74.1%	67 min	2.86%	C
American Airlinesthin sample	9	37.5%	49 min	11.11%	F−

Flight by flight

JetBlue flight numbers on BOS to TPA

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 30 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–8am323 flights88.2%
8am–11am301 flights82.4%
11am–2pm177 flights78.9%
2pm–5pm303 flights68.3%
5pm–8pm316 flights62.6%
8pm–5am156 flights58.0%

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

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.0% on time, against 88.2% 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 323 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

JetBlue on BOS to TPA through the year

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

February is the weak month at 67.2% on time, against 83.8% 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. April was the busiest month here, with 183 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.4%. 18 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 47% of the 27,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
47%
Carrier
30%
National Airspace System
22%
Extreme weather
2%
Security
0%

47% 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 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 26 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 26,501 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 88.2% on time here.

Cancellations run at 2.86%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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. 10.0% 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.

The 1,185 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 73.4% on time across 1,580 flights, within half a point 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 1,576 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 TPA

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.86% 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. 1,522 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