Route reliability record
SJU→TPA
San Juan to Tampa
- Flights
- 1,478
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,237 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four 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 1,478 SJU to TPA flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 470 at 82.4% on time.
Best time to fly SJU to TPA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.6% of the time and Friday flights 81.0%, against 76.9% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,453 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.49%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
82.4% on time across 470 flights
These figures cover 1,478 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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
Which airline is most reliable on SJU to TPA
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 82.4% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 75.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 614 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 470 | 82.4% | 64 min | 0.85% | B+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 614 | 75.9% | 66 min | 0.49% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 344 | 74.0% | 91 min | 2.33% | C |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 50 | 55.8% | 51 min | 14.00% | D− |
Southwest leads JetBlue by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on SJU to TPA
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 San Juan to Tampa
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SJU → TPASan Juan to Tampa | Southwest Airlines | 81.7% | 82.4% | 0.85% | 5am–8am, Mon | — |
| 2. SJU → TPASan Juan to Tampa | JetBlue Airways | 75.5% | 75.9% | 0.49% | 5am–8am, Tue | B6 2752 06:01 |
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 33 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am492 flights93.6%
- 8am–11am89 flights89.5%
- 11am–2pm62 flights83.9%
- 2pm–5pm383 flights67.6%
- 5pm–8pm236 flights60.5%
- 8pm–5am216 flights66.0%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.5% on time, against 93.6% 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 492 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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.
August is the worst month at 62.8% on time, 29 points below September, the best at 91.5%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 166 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 81.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.2%. 10 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 65% of the 24,000 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.
- 65%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
65% 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 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 65 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 23,877 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 93.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.49% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.20%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.8% 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 1,237 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 73.8% on time across 1,478 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,478 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 TPA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 91.5% on time and August 62.8%, a swing of 29 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,453 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SJU to TPA questions
How often is SJU to TPA delayed?
Roughly 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 23.1% of the 1,478 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SJU to TPA?
Southwest Airlines leads at 82.4% on time across 470 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 75.9%, a gap of 7 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SJU to TPA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 60.5%, 33 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 August delays on SJU to TPA?
August is the weakest month at 62.8% on time, compared with 91.5% in September. Across the year that is 29 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
- TPA to SJU — the return legseparate record
- Luis Munoz Marin International (SJU) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on SJU to TPA82.4%
- JetBlue Airways on SJU to TPA75.9%
- Frontier Airlines on SJU to TPA74.0%
- SJU to MCO, a related route78.9%
- ATL to TPA, a related route73.3%
- SJU to JFK, a related route79.3%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record82.4%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record75.9%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record74.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. SJU to TPA and TPA to SJU 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.