Route reliability record
TPA→SJU
Tampa to San Juan
- Flights
- 1,561
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,237 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,561 TPA to SJU flights, of which JetBlue Airways flew 680 at 76.0% on time.
Best time to fly TPA to SJU: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 80.3%, against 72.7% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 46 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,532 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.79%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
JetBlue
76.0% on time across 680 flights
These figures cover 1,561 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 76.0% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 66.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 470 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 | 680 | 76.0% | 81 min | 1.62% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 360 | 73.3% | 109 min | 2.22% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 470 | 66.5% | 52 min | 0.43% | C+ |
JetBlue leads Southwest by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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.
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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 | 74.8% | 76.0% | 1.62% | 5am–8am, Wed | B6 1751 10:10 |
| 2. TPA → SJUTampa to San Juan | Southwest Airlines | 66.2% | 66.5% | 0.43% | 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 10 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am287 flights93.8%
- 8am–11am182 flights80.6%
- 11am–2pm273 flights76.2%
- 2pm–5pm157 flights69.2%
- 5pm–8pm226 flights66.7%
- 8pm–5am436 flights57.9%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.9% on time, against 93.8% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 436 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter TPA to SJU by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On TPA to SJU, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.8% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 57.9%, a wide gap of 35.9 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.8%
- 8–11am80.6%
- 11am–2pm76.2%
- 2–5pm69.2%
- 5–8pm66.7%
- 8pm–5am57.9%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 100%.
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. July was the busiest month here, with 186 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.7%, a spread of 14 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 61% of the 32,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 61%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 5%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
61% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 32,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 48 to one. The split is drawn from 31,707 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 93.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.79% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.06%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
10.6% 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.
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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.2% on time across 1,562 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,561 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. 1,532 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TPA to SJU questions
How often is TPA to SJU 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 27.3% of the 1,561 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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 76.0% on time across 680 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 66.5%, a gap of 10 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 93.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 57.9%, 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 SJU76.0%
- Frontier Airlines on TPA to SJU73.3%
- Southwest Airlines on TPA to SJU66.5%
- TPA to ATL, a related route79.6%
- MCO to SJU, a related route73.8%
- TPA to ORD, a related route72.9%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record81.8%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record76.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record73.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.