Carrier route record
B6FLL→DCA
JetBlue Airways · Fort Lauderdale to Washington
- Flights
- 1,362
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 59%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with JetBlue Airways.
JetBlue on FLL to DCA 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 1,362 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 576 at 67.1% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so JetBlue on FLL to DCA runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 90 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,324 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.06%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.5%
Every carrier on FLL to DCA, 2,303 flights
These figures cover 1,362 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.9% 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
JetBlue against every carrier on FLL to DCA
JetBlue flew 1,362 of the 2,303 flights on FLL to DCA, most of the route. Its 68.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 67.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 68.6% to Southwest at 64.0%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 1,362 | 68.6% | 74 min | 2.06% | C |
| American Airlines | 576 | 67.1% | 81 min | 1.74% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 365 | 64.0% | 68 min | 1.37% | D |
No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 67.1%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
JetBlue flight numbers on FLL to DCA
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 42 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am292 flights91.8%
- 8am–11am240 flights75.4%
- 11am–2pm160 flights63.6%
- 2pm–5pm254 flights63.3%
- 5pm–8pm202 flights50.0%
- 8pm–5am214 flights56.8%
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 50.0% on time, against 91.8% 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 292 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on FLL to DCA through the year
July is the worst month at 49.5% on time, 32 points below October, the best at 81.5%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 131 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 77.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.1%. 18 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 31,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%National Airspace System
- 31%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
35% 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 31,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 30,888 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 91.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.06% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.73%.
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. 11.9% 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.
The 899 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 runs 68.7% on time across 1,361 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,362 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.
What to do with this
Booking JetBlue on FLL to DCA
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 81.5% on time and July 49.5%, a swing of 32 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,324 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to DCA, every carrier
- JetBlue on DCA to FLL, the return leg
- American Airlines on FLL to DCA67.1%
- Southwest Airlines on FLL to DCA64.0%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.