Carrier route record
B6JFK→ATL
JetBlue Airways · New York to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,079
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 25%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with JetBlue Airways.
JetBlue on JFK to ATL carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.0% 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 1,079 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 2,456 at 82.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so JetBlue on JFK to ATL runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 93 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,035 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.99%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.7%
Every carrier on JFK to ATL, 4,272 flights
These figures cover 1,079 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 JFK to ATL
JetBlue flew 1,079 of the 4,272 flights on JFK to ATL, about 25% of it. Its 68.3% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 82.2% to JetBlue at 68.3%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 82.2% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 70.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 737 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 2,456 | 82.2% | 83 min | 1.51% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 737 | 70.5% | 74 min | 2.17% | C |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 1,079 | 68.3% | 71 min | 3.99% | C− |
Delta leads Frontier by 12 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
JetBlue flight numbers on JFK to ATL
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 24 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am112 flights82.1%
- 8am–11am250 flights73.2%
- 11am–2pm122 flights72.3%
- 2pm–5pm279 flights66.1%
- 5pm–8pm124 flights63.2%
- 8pm–5am192 flights57.9%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.9% on time, against 82.1% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 279 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on JFK to ATL through the year
December is the weak month at 56.1% on time, against 84.7% in March. 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. November was the busiest month here, with 119 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 75.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 54.9%. 21 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 42% of the 23,000 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.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% 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 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 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 23,186 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 7,978 of the 23,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.99%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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. 12.8% 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 760 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 70.6% on time across 1,080 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,079 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 JFK to ATL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.99% 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. 1,035 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to ATL, every carrier
- JetBlue on ATL to JFK, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on JFK to ATL82.2%
- Frontier Airlines on JFK to ATL70.5%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.