Carrier route record
B6JFK→LAX
JetBlue Airways · New York to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 3,486
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 34%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with JetBlue Airways.
JetBlue on JFK to LAX sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 3,486 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 3,237 at 80.3% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate JetBlue on JFK to LAX from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,412 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.01%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.6%
Every carrier on JFK to LAX, 10,284 flights
These figures cover 3,486 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.4% 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 LAX
JetBlue flew 3,486 of the 10,284 flights on JFK to LAX, about 34% of it. Its 75.6% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 80.3% to Frontier at 70.4%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 3,237 | 80.3% | 95 min | 2.04% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 3,358 | 77.5% | 71 min | 1.79% | B |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 3,486 | 75.6% | 69 min | 2.01% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 203 | 70.4% | 68 min | 1.48% | C |
No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 80.3%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
JetBlue flight numbers on JFK to LAX
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 25 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am643 flights86.1%
- 8am–11am719 flights80.5%
- 11am–2pm500 flights82.2%
- 2pm–5pm388 flights75.5%
- 5pm–8pm646 flights67.5%
- 8pm–5am590 flights61.5%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.5% on time, against 86.1% for the 5am–8am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 719 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on JFK to LAX through the year
June is the worst month at 65.8% on time, 20 points below March, the best at 85.7%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 325 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 79.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.6%. 13 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 44% of the 57,000 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
44% 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 57,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 57,194 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 86.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.01% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.
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. 9.4% 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.
At 2,475 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.3% on time across 3,485 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,486 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.
What to do with this
Booking JetBlue on JFK to LAX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. March runs 85.7% on time and June 65.8%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 3,412 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to LAX, every carrier
- JetBlue on LAX to JFK, the return leg
- American Airlines on JFK to LAX80.3%
- Delta Air Lines on JFK to LAX77.5%
- Frontier Airlines on JFK to LAX70.4%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.