Route reliability record
JFK→CMH
New York to Columbus
- Flights
- 1,630
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 483 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route 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 four flights in five 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 1,630 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 Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 83.0%, against 78.7% 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
78.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,562 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.99%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
78.7% on time across 1,630 flights
These figures cover 1,630 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.1% 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 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 | 1,630 | 78.7% | 76 min | 3.99% | 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.
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 | 79.9% | 83.7% | 4.56% | 11am–2pm, Wed (route) | YX 3641 08:50 |
| 2. JFK → CMHNew York to Columbus | Republic Airways | 75.6% | 78.7% | 3.99% | 8am–11am, Tue | YX 4767 15:59 |
| 3. LGA → CMHNew York to Columbus | Republic Airways | 73.6% | 77.2% | 4.61% | 5am–8am, Fri | 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 22 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–8am—
- 8am–11am579 flights86.8%
- 11am–2pm7 flights—
- 2pm–5pm660 flights74.4%
- 5pm–8pm37 flights64.9%
- 8pm–5am347 flights74.1%
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 86.8% 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.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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 70.5% on time, against 85.0% in February. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 155 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.3%. 13 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
- 29%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
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 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 25,360 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 86.8% on time 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 actually costs
8.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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 83.6% on time across 1,631 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,630 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 3.99% 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. 1,562 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
JFK to CMH questions
How often is JFK to CMH delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.3% of the 1,630 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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?
78.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about 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 86.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 64.9%, 22 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 CMH?
December is the weakest month at 70.5% on time, compared with 85.0% in February. Across the year that is 15 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 route77.6%
- ORD to CMH, a related route73.1%
- JFK to SFO, a related route74.1%
- Republic Airways on-time record78.7%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.