Carrier route record
B6DCA→PBI
JetBlue Airways · Washington to West Palm Beach
- Flights
- 689
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 41%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with JetBlue Airways.
JetBlue on DCA to PBI sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 689 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so JetBlue on DCA to PBI runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 77 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 671 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.47%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
73.9%
Every carrier on DCA to PBI, 1,689 flights
These figures cover 689 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
JetBlue against every carrier on DCA to PBI
JetBlue flew 689 of the 1,689 flights on DCA to PBI, about 41% of it. Its 69.6% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 77.6% to JetBlue at 69.6%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 76 | 77.6% | 36 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 920 | 76.8% | 76 min | 1.85% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 4 | 75.0% | 122 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 689 | 69.6% | 75 min | 2.47% | C |
Flight by flight
JetBlue flight numbers on DCA to PBI
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 32 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am235 flights83.8%
- 8am–11am72 flights71.8%
- 11am–2pm41 flights80.5%
- 2pm–5pm163 flights51.6%
- 5pm–8pm178 flights63.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 83.8% of the time, against 51.6% for the afternoon window. That is 32 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 235 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on DCA to PBI through the year
December is the weak month at 60.8% on time, against 81.2% in June. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 87 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 77.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.8%, a spread of 16 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late JetBlue on DCA to PBI runs when it is late
The 204 late arrivals split 66 under half an hour, 59 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 79 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early162 flights24.1%
- Within 15 min305 flights45.5%
- 15–29 min late66 flights9.8%
- 30–59 min late59 flights8.8%
- 1–2 hours late40 flights6.0%
- 2+ hours late39 flights5.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 671 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
24 of 174 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. In the other direction, 54 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at PBI.
The worst days
Worst days for JetBlue on DCA to PBI
The latest arrival of the period was on 12 June 2026, 7 hours 24 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 12 June 2026 | 7 hours 24 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 May 2026 | 6 hours 12 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 23 February 2026 | 5 hours 58 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 30 December 2025 | 5 hours 45 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 1 December 2025 | 4 hours 45 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why JetBlue runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
51% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 51 to one. The split is drawn from 15,224 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 83.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.47% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.15%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
11.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 857 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 64.4% on time across 689 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 689 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 PBI
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 689 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 69.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 671 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to PBI, every carrier
- JetBlue on PBI to DCA, the return leg
- American Airlines on DCA to PBI76.8%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Palm Beach International (PBI) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.