Carrier route record
B6JFK→SAN
JetBlue Airways · New York to San Diego
- Flights
- 724
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 30%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with JetBlue Airways.
JetBlue on JFK to SAN lands a B−, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 724 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Alaska Airlines, flew 647 at 76.4% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, JetBlue's JFK to SAN record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 59 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 696 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.59%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
78.0%
Every carrier on JFK to SAN, 2,417 flights
These figures cover 724 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 12 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.
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 SAN
JetBlue flew 724 of the 2,417 flights on JFK to SAN, about 30% of it. Its 83.2% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 83.2% to Delta at 75.5%.
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 724 | 83.2% | 60 min | 3.59% | B− |
| Alaska Airlines | 647 | 76.4% | 69 min | 1.55% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,046 | 75.5% | 54 min | 3.15% | B− |
Delta Air Lines cancels 3.1% 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
JetBlue flight numbers on JFK to SAN
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 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 724 flights.
- 5am–8am209 flights86.3%
- 8am–11am108 flights86.5%
- 11am–2pm48 flights84.4%
- 2pm–5pm352 flights80.0%
- 5pm–8pm7 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 86.5% on time for the 8am–11am window against 80.0% for 2pm–5pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 352 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on JFK to SAN through the year
August is the worst month at 70.9% on time, 18 points below November, the best at 88.9%. 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, Friday is the strongest day at 92.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.3%, a spread of 21 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late JetBlue on JFK to SAN runs when it is late
JetBlue on JFK to SAN often beats the schedule: 319 of 696 completed flights, 46%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 117 late arrivals split 38 under half an hour, 40 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 39 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early319 flights45.8%
- Within 15 min260 flights37.4%
- 15–29 min late38 flights5.5%
- 30–59 min late40 flights5.7%
- 1–2 hours late25 flights3.6%
- 2+ hours late14 flights2.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 696 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
27 of 101 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 27% of them. In the other direction, 43 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 SAN.
The worst days
Worst days for JetBlue on JFK to SAN
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 June 2026, 3 hours 16 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across June, March, December, May and August, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 14 June 2026 | 3 hours 16 minutes | Carrier |
| 24 March 2026 | 3 hours 8 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 December 2025 | 3 hours 5 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 28 May 2026 | 3 hours | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 2 August 2026 | 2 hours 58 minutes | National Airspace System |
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 7,026 reported delay minutes.
- 41%National Airspace System
- 28%Carrier
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
41% 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 2,911 minutes out of 7,026, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 7,026 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.59%, 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
5.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 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 81.7% on time across 724 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. 724 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: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.59% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 696 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to SAN, every carrier
- JetBlue on SAN to JFK, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on JFK to SAN76.4%
- Delta Air Lines on JFK to SAN75.5%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.