Carrier route record

B6EWR→FLL

JetBlue Airways · Newark to Fort Lauderdale

Flights: 1,003
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 21%
Carriers: 3

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

JetBlue on EWR to FLL carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,003 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,678 at 78.7% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so JetBlue on EWR to FLL runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 52 extra late arrivals.

On time

72.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 965 completed flights

Avg delay

80 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.49%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.7%

Every carrier on EWR to FLL, 4,755 flights

These figures cover 1,003 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.1% 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 EWR to FLL

JetBlue flew 1,003 of the 4,755 flights on EWR to FLL, about 21% of it. Its 72.4% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 78.7% to Spirit at 71.0%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 78.7% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 71.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,074 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on EWR to FLL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	2,678	78.7%	68 min	2.17%	B
JetBlue Airways (this page)	1,003	72.4%	80 min	3.49%	C−
Spirit Airlines	1,074	71.0%	83 min	6.80%	C−

Spirit Airlines cancels 6.8% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.

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 25 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am364 flights81.7%
8am–11am44 flights56.8%
11am–2pm167 flights74.7%
2pm–5pm83 flights66.2%
5pm–8pm203 flights65.1%
8pm–5am142 flights64.4%

Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 81.7% of the time, against 56.8% for the morning window. That is 25 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 364 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

JetBlue on EWR to FLL through the year

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

December is the weak month at 52.2% on time, against 92.0% 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 103 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 76.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.7%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why JetBlue runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 21,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
38%
Carrier
25%
National Airspace System
25%
Extreme weather
12%
Security
0%

Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 21,287 reported delay minutes.

38% 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 3 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.

Cancellations run at 3.49%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 12.1% 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 1,065 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 62.3% on time across 1,004 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,003 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 EWR to FLL

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.49% 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. 965 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