Carrier route record

B6JFK→SAN

JetBlue Airways · New York to San Diego

Flights: 727
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 30%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with JetBlue Airways.

JetBlue on JFK to SAN earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 727 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,036 at 76.6% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, JetBlue's JFK to SAN record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 81 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 707 completed flights

Avg delay

61 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.48%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.1%

Every carrier on JFK to SAN, 2,413 flights

These figures cover 727 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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

JetBlue against every carrier on JFK to SAN

JetBlue flew 727 of the 2,413 flights on JFK to SAN, about 30% of it. Its 85.7% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 85.7% to Alaska at 75.7%.

The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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.

On-time performance by carrier on JFK to SAN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
JetBlue Airways (this page)	727	85.7%	61 min	2.48%	A
Delta Air Lines	1,036	76.6%	57 min	2.80%	B
Alaska Airlines	650	75.7%	56 min	1.69%	B

No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 76.6%, about a point 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 SAN

B6 118915:5982.8% · 362 flights

Departure window

When JetBlue runs best on this route

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 727 flights.

5am–8am235 flights88.9%
8am–11am82 flights89.9%
11am–2pm48 flights84.4%
2pm–5pm355 flights82.7%
5pm–8pm7 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 89.9% on time for the 8am–11am window against 82.7% for 2pm–5pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 355 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

JetBlue on JFK to SAN through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.August best, June worst

June is the worst month at 78.0% on time, 14 points below August, the best at 91.8%. 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. November was the busiest month here, with 63 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 91.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.2%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

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 6,130 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
34%
Late-arriving aircraft
32%
Carrier
31%
Extreme weather
3%

34% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 2,071 minutes out of 6,130, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 6,130 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 89.9% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 2.48% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

At 2,446 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 runs 84.3% on time across 727 flights, within about a point 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. 727 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 SAN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 727 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 85.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 707 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures