Carrier route record
B6PBI→DCA
JetBlue Airways · West Palm Beach to Washington
- Flights
- 689
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 41%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with JetBlue Airways.
JetBlue on PBI to DCA draws a D. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 689 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so JetBlue on PBI to DCA runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 129 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 671 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.32%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
69.6%
Every carrier on PBI to DCA, 1,690 flights
These figures cover 689 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
JetBlue against every carrier on PBI to DCA
JetBlue flew 689 of the 1,690 flights on PBI to DCA, about 41% of it. Its 64.4% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 77.3% to JetBlue at 64.4%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 76 | 77.3% | 54 min | 1.32% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 4 | 75.0% | 120 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 921 | 72.9% | 97 min | 1.95% | C |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 689 | 64.4% | 86 min | 2.32% | D |
Flight by flight
JetBlue flight numbers on PBI to DCA
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 25 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am21 flights—
- 8am–11am125 flights80.3%
- 11am–2pm127 flights71.4%
- 2pm–5pm241 flights55.8%
- 5pm–8pm174 flights56.2%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 80.3% of the time, against 55.8% for the afternoon window. That is 25 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 241 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on PBI to DCA through the year
Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 45.3%. June is the strongest month at 84.6%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 39 points. January was the busiest month here, with 87 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 51.5%, a spread of 29 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late JetBlue on PBI to DCA runs when it is late
The 239 late arrivals split 50 under half an hour, 72 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 117 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early140 flights20.9%
- Within 15 min292 flights43.5%
- 15–29 min late50 flights7.5%
- 30–59 min late72 flights10.7%
- 1–2 hours late71 flights10.6%
- 2+ hours late46 flights6.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 671 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
28 of 228 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 12% of them. In the other direction, 39 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DCA.
The worst days
Worst days for JetBlue on PBI to DCA
The latest arrival of the period was on 13 March 2026, 18 hours 21 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 13 March 2026 | 18 hours 21 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 December 2025 | 8 hours 39 minutes | Carrier |
| 12 June 2026 | 7 hours 49 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 10 May 2026 | 6 hours 33 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 February 2026 | 6 hours 16 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why JetBlue runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 20,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%National Airspace System
- 16%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
54% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 54 to one. The split is drawn from 20,435 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 80.3% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.32% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
17.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 857 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 69.6% on time across 689 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 689 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 PBI to DCA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 689 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 64.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 671 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PBI to DCA, every carrier
- JetBlue on DCA to PBI, the return leg
- American Airlines on PBI to DCA72.9%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- Palm Beach International (PBI) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.