Carrier route record
B6JFK→RDU
JetBlue Airways · New York to Raleigh
- Flights
- 959
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 41%
- 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 RDU carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 6.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten 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 959 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so JetBlue on JFK to RDU runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 87 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 893 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.78%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
72.4%
Every carrier on JFK to RDU, 2,335 flights
These figures cover 959 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.2% 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 RDU
JetBlue flew 959 of the 2,335 flights on JFK to RDU, about 41% of it. Its 68.6% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 75.0% to JetBlue at 68.6%.
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 | 1,376 | 75.0% | 66 min | 6.32% | B− |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 959 | 68.6% | 85 min | 6.78% | 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 29 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am39 flights86.1%
- 8am–11am228 flights77.6%
- 11am–2pm126 flights81.8%
- 2pm–5pm234 flights65.1%
- 5pm–8pm94 flights58.0%
- 8pm–5am238 flights57.4%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.4% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 238 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on JFK to RDU through the year
August is the worst month at 47.6% on time, 43 points below September, the best at 90.6%. 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 105 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.2%, a spread of 25 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late JetBlue on JFK to RDU runs when it is late
JetBlue on JFK to RDU often beats the schedule: 258 of 893 completed flights, 29%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 280 late arrivals split 72 under half an hour, 81 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 127 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early258 flights28.9%
- Within 15 min355 flights39.8%
- 15–29 min late72 flights8.1%
- 30–59 min late81 flights9.1%
- 1–2 hours late72 flights8.1%
- 2+ hours late55 flights6.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 893 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
39 of 283 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. 36 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for JetBlue on JFK to RDU
The latest arrival of the period was on 31 January 2026, 14 hours 21 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 31 January 2026 | 14 hours 21 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 18 July 2026 | 11 hours 10 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 11 July 2026 | 9 hours 10 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 August 2026 | 8 hours 16 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 4 April 2026 | 7 hours 32 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why JetBlue runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 24,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 10%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. Across 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 23,646 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 run at 6.78%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
14.2% 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 427 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 70.8% on time across 959 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 959 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 RDU
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.78% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 893 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to RDU, every carrier
- JetBlue on RDU to JFK, the return leg
- Republic Airways on JFK to RDU75.0%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) 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.