Carrier route record
B6LGA→TPA
JetBlue Airways · New York to Tampa
- Flights
- 477
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 17%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with JetBlue Airways.
JetBlue on LGA to TPA draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 477 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,666 at 73.7% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so JetBlue on LGA to TPA runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 108 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 458 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.35%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.0%
Every carrier on LGA to TPA, 2,840 flights
These figures cover 477 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.3% 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 LGA to TPA
JetBlue flew 477 of the 2,840 flights on LGA to TPA, about 17% of it. Its 66.8% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 100.0% to JetBlue at 66.8%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 73.7% of the time; American Airlines manages 67.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 690 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 4 | 75.0% | 108 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,666 | 73.7% | 80 min | 3.18% | C− |
| American Airlines | 690 | 67.4% | 77 min | 3.04% | C− |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 477 | 66.8% | 81 min | 3.35% | C− |
Delta Air Lines cancels 3.2% 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 LGA to TPA
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 28 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am252 flights78.9%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm111 flights58.9%
- 5pm–8pm18 flights—
- 8pm–5am94 flights51.1%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 51.1% on time, against 78.9% for the 8am–11am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 252 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on LGA to TPA through the year
December is the weak month at 49.2% on time, against 85.4% in September. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 77.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 56.1%. 22 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why JetBlue runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 12,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
54% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 54 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 12,338 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 78.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.35%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.3% 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.
The 1,010 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 64.5% on time across 478 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. 477 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 LGA to TPA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.35% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over 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. 458 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to TPA, every carrier
- JetBlue on TPA to LGA, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on LGA to TPA73.7%
- American Airlines on LGA to TPA67.4%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.