Carrier route record
B6JFK→LAX
JetBlue Airways · New York to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 3,480
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 34%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 3,480 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 3,298 at 78.6% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so JetBlue on JFK to LAX runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 48 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,364 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.19%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
75.4%
Every carrier on JFK to LAX, 10,285 flights
These figures cover 3,480 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.2% 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 LAX
JetBlue flew 3,480 of the 10,285 flights on JFK to LAX, about 34% of it. Its 72.5% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 78.6% to Frontier at 70.8%. 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 | 3,298 | 78.6% | 96 min | 2.61% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 3,366 | 75.3% | 67 min | 2.55% | B |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 3,480 | 72.5% | 73 min | 3.19% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 141 | 70.8% | 78 min | 2.13% | C |
No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 78.6%, 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
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 25 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am632 flights84.0%
- 8am–11am683 flights77.9%
- 11am–2pm553 flights77.8%
- 2pm–5pm440 flights69.3%
- 5pm–8pm629 flights64.6%
- 8pm–5am543 flights58.9%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.9% on time, against 84.0% 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 683 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on JFK to LAX through the year
August is the worst month at 57.9% on time, 28 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. December was the busiest month here, with 323 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 77.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.5%, a spread of 15 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late JetBlue on JFK to LAX runs when it is late
JetBlue on JFK to LAX often beats the schedule: 1,158 of 3,364 completed flights, 34%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 924 late arrivals split 287 under half an hour, 260 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 377 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early1,158 flights34.4%
- Within 15 min1,282 flights38.1%
- 15–29 min late287 flights8.5%
- 30–59 min late260 flights7.7%
- 1–2 hours late210 flights6.2%
- 2+ hours late167 flights5.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 3,364 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
136 of 743 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. In the other direction, 317 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 LAX.
The worst days
Worst days for JetBlue on JFK to LAX
The latest arrival of the period was on 4 July 2026, 12 hours 37 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.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 4 July 2026 | 12 hours 37 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 August 2026 | 10 hours 52 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 January 2026 | 10 hours 30 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 December 2025 | 10 hours 10 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 21 July 2026 | 9 hours 38 minutes | Extreme weather |
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 67,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 67,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 67,260 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 84.0% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.19%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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
11.2% 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 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 77.9% on time across 3,479 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 3,480 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 delay figures matter less here than the 3.19% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 3,364 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 LAX78.6%
- Delta Air Lines on JFK to LAX75.3%
- Frontier Airlines on JFK to LAX70.8%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) 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.