Carrier route record

B6TPA→JFK

JetBlue Airways · Tampa to New York

Flights: 1,046
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 46%
Carriers: 3

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

JetBlue on TPA to JFK carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.0% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,046 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate JetBlue on TPA to JFK from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

77.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,001 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.02%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.2%

Every carrier on TPA to JFK, 2,298 flights

These figures cover 1,046 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% 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

JetBlue against every carrier on TPA to JFK

JetBlue flew 1,046 of the 2,298 flights on TPA to JFK, about 46% of it. Its 77.1% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 82.8% to JetBlue at 77.1%. One 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 TPA to JFK
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	1,094	82.8%	81 min	2.56%	B
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	158	82.1%	49 min	0.63%	B+
JetBlue Airways (this page)	1,046	77.1%	74 min	4.02%	B−

Flight by flight

JetBlue flight numbers on TPA 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 44 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–8am229 flights95.6%
8am–11am215 flights87.3%
11am–2pm115 flights68.8%
2pm–5pm246 flights70.4%
5pm–8pm206 flights61.6%
8pm–5am35 flights51.5%

Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 51.5% on time, against 95.6% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 246 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

JetBlue on TPA to JFK through the year

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

December is the weak month at 57.7% on time, against 96.7% 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. June was the busiest month here, with 110 flights.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 80.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.8%. 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 17,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
43%
National Airspace System
33%
Carrier
23%
Extreme weather
1%

43% 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 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 43 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 17,036 reported delay minutes.

33% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 5,685 minutes out of 17,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 4.02%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.3% 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 1,005 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 75.9% on time across 1,049 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. 1,046 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 TPA to JFK

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.02% 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. 1,001 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