Carrier route record
B6MSY→FLL
JetBlue Airways · New Orleans to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 425
- 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 MSY to FLL sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 425 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Spirit Airlines, flew 604 at 78.8% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so JetBlue on MSY to FLL runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 63 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 415 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.88%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.2%
Every carrier on MSY to FLL, 1,397 flights
These figures cover 425 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.1% 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 MSY to FLL
JetBlue flew 425 of the 1,397 flights on MSY to FLL, about 30% of it. Its 71.3% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 78.8% to JetBlue at 71.3%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines | 604 | 78.8% | 64 min | 3.31% | B− |
| Southwest Airlines | 368 | 74.0% | 46 min | 0.27% | C+ |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 425 | 71.3% | 82 min | 1.88% | C |
Spirit Airlines cancels 3.3% 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.
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 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am241 flights83.2%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm13 flights—
- 2pm–5pm149 flights55.2%
- 5pm–8pm22 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 83.2% of the time, against 55.2% for the afternoon window. That is 28 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 241 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on MSY to FLL through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 50.0%. January is the strongest month at 82.9%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 33 points. May was the busiest month here, with 64 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.3%. 25 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 49% of the 9,733 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
49% 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 9,733 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 9,733 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 83.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.88% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.47%.
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. 10.1% 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 673 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 60.0% on time across 426 flights, 11 points below 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 11 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 425 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 MSY to FLL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 425 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 71.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 415 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSY to FLL, every carrier
- JetBlue on FLL to MSY, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on MSY to FLL78.8%
- Southwest Airlines on MSY to FLL74.0%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) 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.