Carrier route record
B6MCO→BUF
JetBlue Airways · Orlando to Buffalo
- Flights
- 533
- 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 MCO to BUF 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 533 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so JetBlue on MCO to BUF runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 104 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 524 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.50%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.1%
Every carrier on MCO to BUF, 1,771 flights
These figures cover 533 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.9% 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 MCO to BUF
JetBlue flew 533 of the 1,771 flights on MCO to BUF, about 30% of it. Its 67.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 68.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 76.1% to Southwest at 66.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 288 | 76.1% | 69 min | 1.39% | B |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 533 | 67.2% | 70 min | 1.50% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 950 | 66.2% | 51 min | 0.95% | C+ |
Flight by flight
JetBlue flight numbers on MCO to BUF
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 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am13 flights—
- 8am–11am77 flights80.0%
- 11am–2pm80 flights53.8%
- 2pm–5pm128 flights69.6%
- 5pm–8pm170 flights65.7%
- 8pm–5am65 flights62.5%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 53.8% on time against 80.0% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 170 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on MCO to BUF through the year
May is the best month on the calendar at 87.1% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. August was the busiest month here, with 59 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 50.7%. 30 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 46% 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
46% 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 12 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 12,024 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 80.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.50% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.19%.
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. 13.9% 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 1,011 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.0% on time across 535 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 533 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 MCO to BUF
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 533 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 67.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 524 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to BUF, every carrier
- JetBlue on BUF to MCO, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to BUF76.1%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to BUF66.2%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.