Route reliability record
JFK→PBI
New York to West Palm Beach
- Flights
- 2,050
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,028 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.6% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,050 JFK to PBI flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 667 at 80.9% on time.
Best time to fly JFK to PBI: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 82.5%, against 74.8% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,947 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.59%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
80.9% on time across 667 flights
These figures cover 2,050 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on JFK to PBI
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 80.9% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 71.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,383 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 667 | 80.9% | 75 min | 4.65% | B− |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,383 | 71.9% | 70 min | 4.56% | C− |
Delta Air Lines cancels 4.7% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Flights on JFK to PBI
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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly New York to West Palm Beach
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. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. EWR → PBINewark to West Palm Beach | United Airlines | 77.7% | 79.4% | 2.10% | 5am–8am, Wed | UA 1771 06:30 |
| 2. JFK → PBINew York to West Palm Beach | Delta Air Lines | 77.1% | 80.9% | 4.65% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 2018 07:00 |
| 3. EWR → FLLNewark to Fort Lauderdale | United Airlines | 76.2% | 78.2% | 2.53% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 1364 07:00 |
| 4. JFK → FLLNew York to Fort Lauderdale | Delta Air Lines | 72.4% | 75.3% | 3.90% | 5am–8am, Tue | DL 1422 07:00 |
| 5. ISP → PBIIslip to West Palm Beach | JetBlue Airways | 71.8% | 73.7% | 2.59% | 5am–8am, Tue | B6 545 13:55 |
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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 27 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am545 flights89.5%
- 8am–11am206 flights79.5%
- 11am–2pm313 flights67.8%
- 2pm–5pm613 flights70.7%
- 5pm–8pm259 flights62.2%
- 8pm–5am114 flights66.4%
Scale runs 55% to 95%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.2% on time, against 89.5% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 613 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter JFK to PBI by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On JFK to PBI, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 89.5% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 62.2%, a wide gap of 27.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am89.5%
- 8–11am79.5%
- 11am–2pm67.8%
- 2–5pm70.7%
- 5–8pm62.2%
- 8pm–5am66.4%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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 66.7% on time, against 89.9% in May. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 219 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.4%, a spread of 17 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 35,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 28%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 35,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 34,930 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 89.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.59%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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
10.2% 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.
The 1,028 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 runs 74.3% on time across 2,051 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 2,050 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in PBI after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.59% 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. 1,947 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
JFK to PBI questions
How often is JFK to PBI delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 25.2% of the 2,050 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on JFK to PBI?
Delta Air Lines leads at 80.9% on time across 667 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 71.9%, a gap of 9 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on JFK to PBI?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 62.2%, 27 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 PBI?
December is the weakest month at 66.7% on time, compared with 89.9% in May. Across the year that is 23 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
- PBI to JFK — the return legseparate record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Palm Beach International (PBI) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on JFK to PBI80.9%
- JetBlue Airways on JFK to PBI71.9%
- JFK to LAX, a related route75.4%
- ATL to PBI, a related route75.8%
- JFK to SFO, a related route71.4%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record80.9%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record71.9%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. JFK to PBI and PBI 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.