Carrier route record
B6RDU→JFK
JetBlue Airways · Raleigh to New York
- Flights
- 959
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 41%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with JetBlue Airways.
JetBlue on RDU to JFK carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 7.0% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 959 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so JetBlue on RDU to JFK runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 65 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 891 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.99%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.6%
Every carrier on RDU to JFK, 2,334 flights
These figures cover 959 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.9% 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 RDU to JFK
JetBlue flew 959 of the 2,334 flights on RDU to JFK, about 41% of it. Its 70.8% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 77.2% to JetBlue at 70.8%.
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 Airways | 1,375 | 77.2% | 74 min | 4.58% | B− |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 959 | 70.8% | 81 min | 6.99% | C− |
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 55 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am247 flights83.8%
- 8am–11am112 flights80.2%
- 11am–2pm212 flights72.5%
- 2pm–5pm136 flights72.7%
- 5pm–8pm215 flights53.2%
- 8pm–5am37 flights29.0%
Scale runs 20% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 29.0% on time, against 83.8% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 247 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on RDU to JFK through the year
December is the weak month at 56.7% on time, against 90.0% in April. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 105 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.5%, a spread of 19 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late JetBlue on RDU to JFK runs when it is late
JetBlue on RDU to JFK often beats the schedule: 275 of 891 completed flights, 31%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 260 late arrivals split 69 under half an hour, 76 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 115 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early275 flights30.9%
- Within 15 min356 flights40.0%
- 15–29 min late69 flights7.7%
- 30–59 min late76 flights8.5%
- 1–2 hours late64 flights7.2%
- 2+ hours late51 flights5.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 891 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 245 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 27 made it up before arrival. 42 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for JetBlue on RDU to JFK
The latest arrival of the period was on 11 July 2026, 8 hours 24 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 11 July 2026 | 8 hours 24 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 August 2026 | 8 hours 22 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 June 2026 | 8 hours 14 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 July 2026 | 7 hours 37 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 December 2025 | 6 hours 27 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why JetBlue runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 21,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 to one. The split is drawn from 21,054 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 83.8% on time here.
Cancellations run at 6.99%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in fifteen 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 costs
12.9% 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.
At 427 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 68.6% on time across 959 flights, within 2 points 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. 959 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 JFK
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.99% 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. 891 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RDU to JFK, every carrier
- JetBlue on JFK to RDU, the return leg
- Republic Airways on RDU to JFK77.2%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.