Route reliability record
JFK→CMH
New York to Columbus
- Flights
- 1,569
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 483 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% 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 1,569 JFK to CMH flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly JFK to CMH: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 82.2%, against 77.7% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
77.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,481 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.42%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Republic
77.7% on time across 1,569 flights
These figures cover 1,569 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% 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 CMH
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,569 | 77.7% | 81 min | 5.42% | B− |
Flight by flight
Flights on JFK to CMH
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 Columbus
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. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. EWR → CMHNewark to Columbus | Republic Airways | 79.6% | 83.9% | 5.10% | 11am–2pm, Wed (route) | YX 3641 08:45 |
| 2. JFK → CMHNew York to Columbus | Republic Airways | 73.5% | 77.7% | 5.42% | 8am–11am, Wed | YX 4767 15:59 |
| 3. LGA → CMHNew York to Columbus | Republic Airways | 72.3% | 76.4% | 5.40% | 5am–8am, Tue | YX 5671 17:30 |
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 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am518 flights85.3%
- 11am–2pm7 flights—
- 2pm–5pm660 flights73.8%
- 5pm–8pm37 flights64.9%
- 8pm–5am347 flights74.8%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.9% on time, against 85.3% for the 8am–11am 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 660 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter JFK to CMH 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 CMH, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 85.3% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 64.9%, a wide gap of 20.4 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am85.3%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm73.8%
- 5–8pm64.9%
- 8pm–5am74.8%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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 65.2% on time, 20 points below February, the best at 85.0%. 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 155 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.4%, a spread of 13 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 27,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 28%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
38% 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 10 to one. The split is drawn from 26,861 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 85.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.42%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
8.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 483 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.8% on time across 1,570 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,569 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 CMH after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.42% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,481 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
JFK to CMH questions
How often is JFK to CMH 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 22.3% of the 1,569 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is JFK to CMH compared with the rest of the country?
77.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of half a point in its favour. That is worth a B− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on JFK to CMH?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 85.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 64.9%, 20 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 CMH?
August is the weakest month at 65.2% on time, compared with 85.0% in February. Across the year that is 20 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
- CMH to JFK — the return legseparate record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- JFK to LAX, a related route75.4%
- ORD to CMH, a related route73.5%
- JFK to SFO, a related route71.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record77.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. JFK to CMH and CMH 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.