Route reliability record
JFK→BUF
New York to Buffalo
- Flights
- 1,218
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 301 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,218 JFK to BUF flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly JFK to BUF: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 79.4%, against 75.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,161 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.52%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
JetBlue
75.0% on time across 1,218 flights
These figures cover 1,218 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.9% 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
Which airline is most reliable on JFK to BUF
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways | 1,218 | 75.0% | 88 min | 4.52% | B− |
Flight by flight
Flights on JFK to BUF
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly New York to Buffalo
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. JFK → BUFNew York to Buffalo | JetBlue Airways | 71.6% | 75.0% | 4.52% | 5am–8am, Tue | B6 1602 07:30 |
| 2. LGA → BUFNew York to Buffalo | Republic Airways | 71.4% | 76.1% | 6.16% | 5pm–8pm, Sat | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 31 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–8am238 flights91.3%
- 8am–11am228 flights85.9%
- 11am–2pm130 flights81.0%
- 2pm–5pm70 flights69.7%
- 5pm–8pm299 flights64.2%
- 8pm–5am253 flights60.8%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 60.8% on time, against 91.3% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 299 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 61.1% on time, against 90.3% in April. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 136 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.3%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 25,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
43% 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 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 25,453 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 9,652 of the 25,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.52%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.9% 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.
At 301 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.4% on time across 1,217 flights, 4 points above 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,218 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in BUF after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.52% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 1,161 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
JFK to BUF questions
How often is JFK to BUF delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 25.0% of the 1,218 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is JFK to BUF compared with the rest of the country?
75.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 points against it. That is worth a B− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on JFK to BUF?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 60.8%, 31 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on JFK to BUF?
December is the weakest month at 61.1% on time, compared with 90.3% in April. Across the year that is 29 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- BUF to JFK — the return legseparate record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- JFK to LAX, a related route77.6%
- ORD to BUF, a related route70.6%
- JFK to SFO, a related route74.1%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record75.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. JFK to BUF and BUF to JFK are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed JFK to BUF’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.