Route reliability record
TPA→SJU
Tampa to San Juan
- Flights
- 1,478
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,237 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,478 TPA to SJU flights, of which JetBlue Airways flew 614 at 78.9% on time.
Best time to fly TPA to SJU: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 81.0%, against 73.8% 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
73.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,455 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.49%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
JetBlue
78.9% on time across 614 flights
These figures cover 1,478 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% 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
Which airline is most reliable on TPA to SJU
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. JetBlue Airways arrives on time 78.9% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 66.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 471 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 51 | 81.8% | 34 min | 13.73% | B− |
| JetBlue Airways | 614 | 78.9% | 72 min | 0.81% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 342 | 73.4% | 112 min | 2.34% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 471 | 66.7% | 50 min | 0.42% | C+ |
The spread between JetBlue and Southwest is 12 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 12 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Flights on TPA to SJU
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 Tampa to San Juan
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. TPA → SJUTampa to San Juan | JetBlue Airways | 78.3% | 78.9% | 0.81% | 5am–8am, Fri | B6 2751 06:00 |
| 2. TPA → SJUTampa to San Juan | Southwest Airlines | 66.4% | 66.7% | 0.42% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 36 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am339 flights93.2%
- 8am–11am138 flights80.4%
- 11am–2pm317 flights74.4%
- 2pm–5pm98 flights75.3%
- 5pm–8pm225 flights66.5%
- 8pm–5am361 flights57.2%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.2% on time, against 93.2% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 361 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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.
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 63.6%. January is the strongest month at 84.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 21 points. June was the busiest month here, with 167 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.6%. 12 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 54% of the 27,000 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.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
54% 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 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 25 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 27,223 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 10,000 of the 27,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.49% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.07%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.6% 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 1,237 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 76.9% on time across 1,478 flights, 3 points above 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 SJU 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. January runs 84.7% on time and October 63.6%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of October before you think about anything else. 1,455 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TPA to SJU questions
How often is TPA to SJU delayed?
About 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 26.2% 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 TPA to SJU?
JetBlue Airways leads at 78.9% on time across 614 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 66.7%, a gap of 12 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 TPA to SJU?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 57.2%, 36 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 October delays on TPA to SJU?
October is the weakest month at 63.6% on time, compared with 84.7% in January. Across the year that is 21 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
- SJU to TPA — the return legseparate record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Luis Munoz Marin International (SJU) delay statistics
- JetBlue Airways on TPA to SJU78.9%
- Frontier Airlines on TPA to SJU73.4%
- Southwest Airlines on TPA to SJU66.7%
- TPA to ATL, a related route79.9%
- MCO to SJU, a related route73.0%
- TPA to ORD, a related route72.8%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record81.8%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record78.9%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record73.4%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. TPA to SJU and SJU to TPA 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.