Carrier route record
B6JFK→DTW
JetBlue Airways · New York to Detroit
- Flights
- 445
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 37%
- 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 DTW draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about 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 77.3%, so JetBlue on JFK to DTW runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 99 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 417 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.07%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
75.6%
Every carrier on JFK to DTW, 1,215 flights
These figures cover 445 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
JetBlue against every carrier on JFK to DTW
JetBlue flew 445 of the 1,215 flights on JFK to DTW, about 37% of it. Its 67.4% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 80.2% to JetBlue at 67.4%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 770 | 80.2% | 94 min | 3.77% | B− |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 445 | 67.4% | 64 min | 6.07% | C− |
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 31 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am10 flights—
- 8am–11am45 flights93.3%
- 11am–2pm25 flights—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am365 flights62.7%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 62.7% 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
- Jul–Sep 202550 flights82.0%
- Oct–Dec 2025152 flights75.0%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights69.5%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights58.2%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights44.0%
Scale runs 35% to 85%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 67.4% on time across 445 flights.
JetBlue on JFK to DTW did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 82.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 44.0%, a swing of 38 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.1%, a spread of 21 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late JetBlue on JFK to DTW runs when it is late
JetBlue on JFK to DTW often beats the schedule: 137 of 417 completed flights, 33%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 136 late arrivals split 38 under half an hour, 48 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 50 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early137 flights32.9%
- Within 15 min144 flights34.5%
- 15–29 min late38 flights9.1%
- 30–59 min late48 flights11.5%
- 1–2 hours late33 flights7.9%
- 2+ hours late17 flights4.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 417 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 130 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 14 made it up before arrival. 20 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for JetBlue on JFK to DTW
The latest arrival of the period was on 22 June 2026, 7 hours 33 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 22 June 2026 | 7 hours 33 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 November 2025 | 4 hours 28 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 4 April 2026 | 3 hours 48 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 11 July 2026 | 3 hours 7 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 30 December 2025 | 3 hours 6 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why JetBlue runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 57% of the 8,728 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
57% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,728 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 19 to one. The split is drawn from 8,728 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 6.07%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly 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
12.0% 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.
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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.6% on time across 445 flights, 17 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 17 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 6.07% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 417 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to DTW, every carrier
- JetBlue on DTW to JFK, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on JFK to DTW80.2%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.