Carrier route record

B6RDU→FLL

JetBlue Airways · Raleigh to Fort Lauderdale

Flights: 567
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 43%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with JetBlue Airways.

JetBlue on RDU to FLL lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 567 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, JetBlue's RDU to FLL record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 50 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 556 completed flights

Avg delay

77 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.76%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.0%

Every carrier on RDU to FLL, 1,318 flights

These figures cover 567 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

JetBlue against every carrier on RDU to FLL

JetBlue flew 567 of the 1,318 flights on RDU to FLL, about 43% of it. Its 82.6% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 82.6% to Spirit at 67.0%. Four 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.

On-time performance by carrier on RDU to FLL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
JetBlue Airways (this page)	567	82.6%	77 min	1.76%	B
Delta Air Linesthin sample	364	78.8%	65 min	1.10%	B
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	141	74.6%	63 min	2.13%	C
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	45	71.1%	73 min	0.00%	C+
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	201	67.0%	75 min	5.97%	C−

Flight by flight

JetBlue flight numbers on RDU to FLL

B6 262507:0089.2% · 365 flights

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 23 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–8am335 flights89.4%
8am–11am42 flights85.7%
11am–2pm48 flights80.9%
2pm–5pm9 flights—
5pm–8pm123 flights66.9%
8pm–5am10 flights—

Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.4% of the time, against 66.9% for the evening window. That is 23 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 335 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

JetBlue on RDU to FLL through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.August best, December worst

December is the weak month at 61.1% on time, against 94.1% in August. 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 56 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.9%. 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 53% of the 7,505 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
53%
Carrier
36%
National Airspace System
11%
Extreme weather
0%

53% 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 7,505 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 53 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 7,505 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 2,667 of the 7,505 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.76% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.18%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 680 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 66.2% on time across 567 flights, 16 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 16 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 567 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 RDU to FLL

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 567 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 82.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 556 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures