Route reliability record
JFK→BUF
New York to Buffalo
- Flights
- 1,226
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 301 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 6.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% 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 1,226 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 91.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 79.6%, against 72.0% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 53 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,144 completed flights
Avg delay
84 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.53%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
JetBlue
72.0% on time across 1,226 flights
These figures cover 1,226 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 | 1,226 | 72.0% | 84 min | 6.53% | C− |
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.
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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. LGA → BUFNew York to Buffalo | Republic Airways | 70.1% | 74.7% | 6.17% | 8am–11am, Sat (route) | — |
| 2. JFK → BUFNew York to Buffalo | JetBlue Airways | 67.3% | 72.0% | 6.53% | 5am–8am, Tue | B6 1602 07:30 |
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 34 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am246 flights91.4%
- 8am–11am166 flights82.4%
- 11am–2pm192 flights74.3%
- 2pm–5pm93 flights63.4%
- 5pm–8pm276 flights62.8%
- 8pm–5am253 flights57.6%
Scale runs 50% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.6% on time, against 91.4% 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 276 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter JFK to BUF by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On JFK to BUF, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 91.4% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 57.6%, a wide gap of 33.8 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am91.4%
- 8–11am82.4%
- 11am–2pm74.3%
- 2–5pm63.4%
- 5–8pm62.8%
- 8pm–5am57.6%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 38 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.
August is the worst month at 51.9% on time, 38 points below April, the best at 90.3%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 136 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.8%, a spread of 15 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 27,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
49% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 to one. The split is drawn from 26,827 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 9,454 of the 27,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 6.53%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in fifteen 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
14.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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 75.2% on time across 1,225 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,226 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 6.53% 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. 1,144 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
JFK to BUF questions
How often is JFK to BUF delayed?
Roughly 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 28.0% of the 1,226 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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?
72.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 5 points against it. That is worth a C− 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 91.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 57.6%, 34 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 August delays on JFK to BUF?
August is the weakest month at 51.9% on time, compared with 90.3% in April. Across the year that is 38 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 route75.4%
- ORD to BUF, a related route70.4%
- JFK to SFO, a related route71.4%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record72.0%
- 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.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.