Route reliability record
PBI→HPN
West Palm Beach to White Plains
- Flights
- 1,640
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,056 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,640 PBI to HPN flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly PBI to HPN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 86.0%, against 73.4% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 42 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,569 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.87%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
JetBlue
73.4% on time across 1,640 flights
These figures cover 1,640 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.8% 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
Which airline is most reliable on PBI to HPN
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways | 1,640 | 73.4% | 72 min | 2.87% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on PBI to HPN
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly West Palm Beach to White Plains
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 5 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PBI → ISPWest Palm Beach to Islip | JetBlue Airways | 76.1% | 77.5% | 1.85% | 5am–8am, Tue | B6 544 10:09 |
| 2. FLL → EWRFort Lauderdale to Newark | United Airlines | 75.6% | 77.3% | 2.20% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. PBI → EWRWest Palm Beach to Newark | United Airlines | 74.6% | 76.3% | 2.24% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 1391 10:00 |
| 4. PBI → JFKWest Palm Beach to New York | JetBlue Airways | 73.6% | 76.3% | 3.52% | 5am–8am, Tue | B6 854 08:15 |
| 5. FLL → JFKFort Lauderdale to New York | Delta Air Lines | 73.6% | 76.4% | 3.65% | 5am–8am, Sat | DL 2165 07:00 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 27 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–8am327 flights94.2%
- 8am–11am70 flights73.5%
- 11am–2pm235 flights67.1%
- 2pm–5pm305 flights68.7%
- 5pm–8pm429 flights67.6%
- 8pm–5am274 flights68.3%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. 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 67.1% on time against 94.2% for 5am–8am. 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 429 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 61.1% on time, against 87.4% in September. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 185 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.7%. 26 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 57% of the 30,000 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
57% 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 30,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 34 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 30,033 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 94.2% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.87%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.8% 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 1,056 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 73.9% on time across 1,640 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,640 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in HPN after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.87% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,569 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PBI to HPN questions
How often is PBI to HPN delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 26.6% of the 1,640 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is PBI to HPN compared with the rest of the country?
73.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PBI to HPN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.2% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 67.1%, 27 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on PBI to HPN?
December is the weakest month at 61.1% on time, compared with 87.4% in September. Across the year that is 26 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- HPN to PBI — the return legseparate record
- PBI to ATL, a related route82.9%
- ORD to HPN, a related route77.3%
- PBI to EWR, a related route74.5%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record73.4%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. PBI to HPN and HPN to PBI are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.