Carrier route record
B6SAN→JFK
JetBlue Airways · San Diego to New York
- Flights
- 727
- 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 SAN to JFK earns a B−. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 727 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Alaska Airlines, flew 650 at 83.7% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, JetBlue's SAN to JFK record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 67 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 700 completed flights
Avg delay
119 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.30%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
83.8%
Every carrier on SAN to JFK, 2,413 flights
These figures cover 727 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 17 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 SAN to JFK
JetBlue flew 727 of the 2,413 flights on SAN to JFK, about 30% of it. Its 84.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 84.3% to Delta at 83.5%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 727 | 84.3% | 119 min | 3.30% | B− |
| Alaska Airlines | 650 | 83.7% | 52 min | 1.38% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,036 | 83.5% | 105 min | 2.99% | B |
No carrier stands out. Alaska tops the table at 83.7%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
JetBlue flight numbers on SAN to JFK
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 16 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–8am—
- 8am–11am109 flights87.7%
- 11am–2pm155 flights78.4%
- 2pm–5pm101 flights73.2%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am362 flights88.8%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The overnight block holds up unusually well at 88.8% on time across 362 flights. Red-eyes fly into empty airspace and empty gates, and they are the first rotation of the aircraft's day rather than the last. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 362 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on SAN to JFK through the year
July is the worst month at 77.6% on time, 13 points below May, the best at 90.2%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. November was the busiest month here, with 63 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 89.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.0%. 12 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. Carrier accounts for 44% of the 13,000 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.
- 44%Carrier
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, 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 5,736 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 13,136 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.30%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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 costs
7.0% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 2,446 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg runs 85.7% on time across 727 flights, within about a point 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. 727 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 SAN to JFK
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.30% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8pm–5am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 700 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SAN to JFK, every carrier
- JetBlue on JFK to SAN, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on SAN to JFK83.7%
- Delta Air Lines on SAN to JFK83.5%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- 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.