Carrier route record
B6DCA→PBI
JetBlue Airways · Washington to West Palm Beach
- Flights
- 733
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 41%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 733 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so JetBlue on DCA to PBI runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 87 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 720 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.50%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.9%
Every carrier on DCA to PBI, 1,796 flights
These figures cover 733 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.8% 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 DCA to PBI
JetBlue flew 733 of the 1,796 flights on DCA to PBI, about 41% of it. Its 68.9% on time is 5 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 PSA at 100.0% to JetBlue at 68.9%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 100.0% | — | 20.00% | A− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 50 | 80.0% | 38 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 1,008 | 77.2% | 72 min | 1.79% | B |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 733 | 68.9% | 79 min | 1.50% | C |
Flight by flight
JetBlue flight numbers on DCA 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 32 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–8am227 flights83.9%
- 8am–11am111 flights73.1%
- 11am–2pm41 flights80.5%
- 2pm–5pm163 flights51.6%
- 5pm–8pm191 flights61.0%
- 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 83.9% 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 227 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on DCA to PBI through the year
July is the worst month at 58.3% on time, 23 points below June, the best at 81.2%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. January was the busiest month here, with 87 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.4%. 20 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 52% of the 18,000 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
52% 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 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 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 17,724 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 83.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.50% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.
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. 12.8% 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 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. 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 63.9% on time across 733 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. 733 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. 733 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 68.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 720 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 PBI77.2%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.