Route reliability record
BUF→JFK
Buffalo to New York
- Flights
- 1,217
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 301 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.9% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about four flights in five arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,217 BUF to JFK flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly BUF to JFK: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 85.4%, against 79.4% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,155 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.93%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
JetBlue
79.4% on time across 1,217 flights
These figures cover 1,217 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.9% 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
Which airline is most reliable on BUF to JFK
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways | 1,217 | 79.4% | 87 min | 4.93% | B− |
Flight by flight
Flights on BUF to JFK
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Buffalo to New York
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BUF → JFKBuffalo to New York | JetBlue Airways | 75.5% | 79.4% | 4.93% | 5am–8am, Tue | B6 2001 06:00 |
| 2. BUF → LGABuffalo to New York | Republic Airways | 73.9% | 78.2% | 5.50% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 16 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–8am353 flights86.5%
- 8am–11am247 flights82.4%
- 11am–2pm144 flights77.2%
- 2pm–5pm115 flights75.0%
- 5pm–8pm128 flights75.0%
- 8pm–5am230 flights70.8%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 86.5% of the time, against 70.8% for the overnight window. That is 16 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 353 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 33 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 57.4% on time, against 90.3% in May. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 136 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.0%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 21,000 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.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
51% 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 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 51 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 20,806 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 86.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.93%, 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.9% 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 301 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 75.0% on time across 1,218 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 1,217 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in JFK after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.93% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 1,155 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BUF to JFK questions
How often is BUF to JFK delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 20.6% of the 1,217 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is BUF to JFK compared with the rest of the country?
79.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 2 points in its favour. That is worth a B− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BUF to JFK?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 70.8%, 16 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on BUF to JFK?
December is the weakest month at 57.4% on time, compared with 90.3% in May. Across the year that is 33 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to BUF — the return legseparate record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- BUF to ORD, a related route74.0%
- LAX to JFK, a related route79.1%
- BUF to LGA, a related route78.2%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record79.4%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. BUF to JFK and JFK to BUF are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.