Carrier route record

B6JFK→DTW

JetBlue Airways · New York to Detroit

Flights: 445
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 36%
Carriers: 2

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

JetBlue on JFK to DTW draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 445 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so JetBlue on JFK to DTW runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 104 extra late arrivals.

On time

67.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 427 completed flights

Avg delay

68 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.82%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

76.1%

Every carrier on JFK to DTW, 1,221 flights

These figures cover 445 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.3% 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

JetBlue against every carrier on JFK to DTW

JetBlue flew 445 of the 1,221 flights on JFK to DTW, about 36% of it. Its 67.2% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 81.1% to JetBlue at 67.2%.

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 DTW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	776	81.1%	99 min	2.45%	B
JetBlue Airways (this page)	445	67.2%	68 min	3.82%	C−

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 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–8am10 flights—
8am–11am45 flights93.3%
11am–2pm25 flights—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am365 flights62.6%

Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 62.6% on time, against 93.3% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

JetBlue on JFK to DTW through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, July worst

July is the worst month at 30.0% on time, 52 points below September, the best at 82.0%. 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 62 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 56.1%. 22 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why JetBlue runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 9,534 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
56%
Carrier
27%
National Airspace System
14%
Extreme weather
3%
Security
0%

56% 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 9,534 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 22 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 9,534 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 93.3% on time here.

Cancellations run at 3.82%, 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 costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.3% 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.

The 509 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 85.5% on time across 445 flights, 18 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 18 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 DTW

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.82% 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. 427 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures