Carrier route record
B6JFK→SFO
JetBlue Airways · New York to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,945
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 29%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with JetBlue Airways.
JetBlue on JFK to SFO lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,945 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 1,448 at 77.2% on time.
American Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 77.2% on time across 1,448 flights.
Key figures
On time
76.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,903 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.01%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.1%
Every carrier on JFK to SFO, 6,730 flights
These figures cover 1,945 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
JetBlue against every carrier on JFK to SFO
JetBlue flew 1,945 of the 6,730 flights on JFK to SFO, about 29% of it. Its 76.7% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 77.2% to Delta at 71.3%.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 6 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 1,448 | 77.2% | 66 min | 2.56% | B |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 1,945 | 76.7% | 75 min | 2.01% | B |
| Alaska Airlines | 1,108 | 71.4% | 70 min | 1.81% | C |
| Delta Air Lines | 2,229 | 71.3% | 70 min | 1.48% | C |
No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 77.2%, 6 points 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 SFO
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 25 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am334 flights89.6%
- 8am–11am469 flights82.2%
- 11am–2pm239 flights82.1%
- 2pm–5pm205 flights72.1%
- 5pm–8pm247 flights65.0%
- 8pm–5am451 flights67.0%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.6% of the time, against 65.0% for the evening window. That is 25 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 469 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on JFK to SFO through the year
June is the worst month at 59.8% on time, 26 points below November, the best at 85.9%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 181 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 71.3%. 12 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 33,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%National Airspace System
- 18%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
41% 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 33,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 33,346 reported delay minutes.
36% 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 12,000 minutes out of 33,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 2.01% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.15%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 2,586 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.4% on time across 1,945 flights, 5 points above 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,945 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.
What to do with this
Booking JetBlue on JFK to SFO
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 85.9% on time and June 59.8%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,903 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to SFO, every carrier
- JetBlue on SFO to JFK, the return leg
- American Airlines on JFK to SFO77.2%
- Alaska Airlines on JFK to SFO71.4%
- Delta Air Lines on JFK to SFO71.3%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.