Carrier route record

B6DCA→JFK

JetBlue Airways · Washington to New York

Flights: 446
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 18%
Carriers: 2

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

JetBlue on DCA to JFK lands a B−, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 446 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, JetBlue's DCA to JFK record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 43 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

81.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 420 completed flights

Avg delay

76 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

5.83%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.1%

Every carrier on DCA to JFK, 2,496 flights

These figures cover 446 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

JetBlue against every carrier on DCA to JFK

JetBlue flew 446 of the 2,496 flights on DCA to JFK, about 18% of it. Its 81.9% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 81.9% to Republic at 77.2%.

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 DCA to JFK
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
JetBlue Airways (this page)	446	81.9%	76 min	5.83%	B−
Republic Airways	2,050	77.2%	69 min	5.37%	B−

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–8am365 flights88.9%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm81 flights50.6%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 50.6% on time, against 88.9% 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 365 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

JetBlue on DCA to JFK through the year

Jul–Sep 2025116 flights86.2%
Oct–Dec 2025149 flights68.8%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights84.1%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights95.5%

Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 81.9% on time across 446 flights.

JetBlue on DCA to JFK did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 95.5% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 68.8%, a swing of 27 points on roughly 112 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 74.6%. 16 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. Carrier accounts for 45% of the 5,810 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.

Carrier
45%
Late-arriving aircraft
28%
National Airspace System
26%
Security
0%

The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 2,633 of the 5,810 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 5,810 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 88.9% on time here.

Cancellations run at 5.83%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in fifteen 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

7.9% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 213 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 54.5% on time across 446 flights, 27 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 27 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 446 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 DCA to JFK

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.83% 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. 420 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