Carrier route record
B6MCO→DCA
JetBlue Airways · Orlando to Washington
- Flights
- 942
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 21%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with JetBlue Airways.
JetBlue on MCO to DCA draws a D. 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 942 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 713 at 73.9% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 73.9% on time across 713 flights.
Key figures
On time
64.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 924 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.38%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.8%
Every carrier on MCO to DCA, 4,586 flights
These figures cover 942 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.4% 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 DCA
JetBlue flew 942 of the 4,586 flights on MCO to DCA, about 21% of it. Its 64.5% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 93.8% to JetBlue at 64.5%. One 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 73.9% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 67.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,097 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 16 | 93.8% | 118 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 713 | 73.9% | 88 min | 3.79% | C− |
| American Airlines | 1,818 | 69.6% | 90 min | 2.20% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,097 | 67.7% | 61 min | 1.19% | C |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 942 | 64.5% | 71 min | 1.38% | D |
Delta Air Lines cancels 3.8% 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 MCO to DCA
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 52 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am69 flights95.5%
- 8am–11am216 flights83.6%
- 11am–2pm272 flights61.4%
- 2pm–5pm272 flights53.0%
- 5pm–8pm113 flights43.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 35% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 43.6% on time, against 95.5% for the 5am–8am 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 272 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on MCO to DCA through the year
February is the weak month at 46.0% on time, against 78.6% in May. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 94 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 75.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 56.9%. 19 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 23,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%National Airspace System
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 9,603 minutes out of 23,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 23,245 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 95.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.38% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.53%.
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. 13.4% 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 759 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 71.6% on time across 945 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 942 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 DCA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 942 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 64.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 924 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to DCA, every carrier
- JetBlue on DCA to MCO, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on MCO to DCA73.9%
- American Airlines on MCO to DCA69.6%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to DCA67.7%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- 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.