Carrier route record

B6JFK→DCA

JetBlue Airways · New York to Washington

Flights: 445
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 18%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with JetBlue Airways.

JetBlue on JFK to DCA earns an F−, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 52.7% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 25 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average an hour and a half. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 445 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so JetBlue on JFK to DCA runs 25 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 246 extra late arrivals.

On time

52.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 412 completed flights

Avg delay

83 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

7.19%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

66.2%

Every carrier on JFK to DCA, 2,518 flights

These figures cover 445 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 22.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Carrier by carrier

JetBlue against every carrier on JFK to DCA

JetBlue flew 445 of the 2,518 flights on JFK to DCA, about 18% of it. Its 52.7% on time is 14 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 66.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 69.1% to JetBlue at 52.7%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on JFK to DCA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airways	2,073	69.1%	69 min	6.22%	C−
JetBlue Airways (this page)	445	52.7%	83 min	7.19%	F−

Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

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 13 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm35 flights41.2%
2pm–5pm2 flights—
5pm–8pm45 flights50.0%
8pm–5am363 flights54.2%

Scale runs 35% to 60%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 41.2% on time against 54.2% for 8pm–5am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

JetBlue on JFK to DCA through the year

Jul–Sep 202554 flights69.8%
Oct–Dec 2025149 flights50.0%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights49.4%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights61.1%
Jul–Sep 202661 flights29.5%

Scale runs 20% to 75%.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 52.7% on time across 445 flights.

JetBlue on JFK to DCA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 69.8% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 29.5%, a swing of 40 points on roughly 89 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 64.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 43.3%, a spread of 21 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late JetBlue on JFK to DCA runs when it is late

The 195 late arrivals split 41 under half an hour, 62 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 92 an hour or more.

15+ min early54 flights13.1%
Within 15 min163 flights39.6%
15–29 min late41 flights10.0%
30–59 min late62 flights15.0%
1–2 hours late52 flights12.6%
2+ hours late40 flights9.7%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 412 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 175 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 17 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 37 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DCA.

The worst days

Worst days for JetBlue on JFK to DCA

The latest arrival of the period was on 16 August 2026, 12 hours 27 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of JetBlue on JFK to DCA in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
16 August 2026	12 hours 27 minutes	Carrier
30 October 2025	9 hours 45 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
28 January 2026	7 hours 35 minutes	Carrier
16 November 2025	5 hours 25 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
16 February 2026	5 hours 14 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why JetBlue runs late on this route

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 16,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
34%
Carrier
32%
National Airspace System
32%
Extreme weather
2%
Security
0%

34% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 to one. The split is drawn from 16,246 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 7.19%, 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 costs

22.3% 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 213 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 8pm–5am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.3% on time across 445 flights, 29 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 29 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 445 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 DCA

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 7.19% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8pm–5am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 412 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures