Carrier route record
B6MCO→RIC
JetBlue Airways · Orlando to Richmond
- Flights
- 676
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 56%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with JetBlue Airways.
JetBlue on MCO to RIC sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 676 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate JetBlue on MCO to RIC from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 663 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.78%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.7%
Every carrier on MCO to RIC, 1,202 flights
These figures cover 676 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.0% 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 RIC
JetBlue flew 676 of the 1,202 flights on MCO to RIC, most of the route. Its 74.7% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 68.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 100.0% to Southwest at 60.3%. Three 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 | 4 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 676 | 74.7% | 69 min | 1.78% | C |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 202 | 61.3% | 71 min | 4.46% | D− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 320 | 60.3% | 60 min | 0.94% | D+ |
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 37 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–8am118 flights95.7%
- 8am–11am108 flights86.0%
- 11am–2pm150 flights73.5%
- 2pm–5pm153 flights67.8%
- 5pm–8pm127 flights58.9%
- 8pm–5am20 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.9% on time, against 95.7% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 153 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on MCO to RIC through the year
August is the worst month at 64.0% on time, 27 points below May, the best at 91.1%. 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 82 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.3%. 16 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 42% 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.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
42% 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 5 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 11,649 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 95.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.78% 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. 10.0% 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 667 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 74.2% on time across 676 flights, within half a point 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. 676 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 RIC
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 676 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 74.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 663 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to RIC, every carrier
- JetBlue on RIC to MCO, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on MCO to RIC61.3%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to RIC60.3%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) 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.