Route reliability record
JFK→ORF
New York to Norfolk
- Flights
- 731
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 290 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, more than four flights in five arrive on time, worth an A− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 731 JFK to ORF flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly JFK to ORF: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 90.2%, against 85.1% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 75 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 699 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.38%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
85.1% on time across 731 flights
These figures cover 731 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on JFK to ORF
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 731 | 85.1% | 65 min | 4.38% | A− |
Flight by flight
Flights on JFK to ORF
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly New York to Norfolk
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. JFK → ORFNew York to Norfolk | Republic Airways | 81.4% | 85.1% | 4.38% | 11am–2pm, Tue | YX 4359 15:10 |
| 2. EWR → ORFNewark to Norfolk | Republic Airways | 79.0% | 83.1% | 4.97% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 3. LGA → ORFNew York to Norfolk | Republic Airways | 71.2% | 76.5% | 6.90% | 5am–8am, Sat (route) | YX 4589 21:29 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 731 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am89 flights88.8%
- 11am–2pm235 flights90.4%
- 2pm–5pm387 flights82.1%
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am19 flights—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 90.4% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 82.1%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 387 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 31 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 65.8% on time, against 96.6% in April. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. December was the busiest month here, with 75 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 82.7%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 57% of the 6,789 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
57% 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 6,789 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 57 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 6,789 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.38%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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 actually costs
6.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 290 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.8% on time across 731 flights, 3 points below 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 731 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ORF after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.38% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 699 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
JFK to ORF questions
How often is JFK to ORF delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.9% of the 731 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is JFK to ORF compared with the rest of the country?
85.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a A− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on JFK to ORF?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 90.4% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 82.1%, 8 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on JFK to ORF?
December is the weakest month at 65.8% on time, compared with 96.6% in April. Across the year that is 31 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- ORF to JFK — the return legseparate record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- JFK to LAX, a related route77.6%
- ATL to ORF, a related route79.0%
- JFK to SFO, a related route74.1%
- Republic Airways on-time record85.1%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. JFK to ORF and ORF to JFK are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.