JetBlue TrueBlue - Block times (JFK-OAK vs SFO) (SFO shorter!)

I was just comparing two different flights I am considering.

Flight 95 JFK-OAK leaves at 8:50pm and is scheduled to land at OAK at 12:37am

Flight 649 departs 10 minutes later, yet arrives at SFO at 12:35am.

SFO 10 miles further away.

Maybe 12 minutes isn't worth caring about, but stuff like this makes me really think that the whole issue of any improved on-time performance by B6 is being fudged by overly generous block times that don't always make sense. In this case, I can't think of another explanation.

at 200mph+ landing speed, 10 miles is nothing

--Russ ;)

Block times are definitely padded excessively, big time. As a matter of fact, CNN just hada report about delays on On the Money yesterday afternoon. Imagine, a 3-hour flight listed as 4+ hours, still arriving late 70% of the time. That says that reality is actually worse than the stats being reported.

I can think of two reasons for the scenario you mention:


The SFO flight is 10 minutes later, causing a great chance of a delay from ripple effect that day.

The SFO flight is newer to B6 than OAK and the airline has not padded those flights as much YET.


at 200mph+ landing speed, 10 miles is nothing

--Russ ;)

I hopoe I'm never on one of those commercial flights :D My A320 flights tend to touch down at about ~145mph

The SFO flight is 10 minutes later, causing a great chance of a delay from ripple effect that day.

The SFO flight is newer to B6 than OAK and the airline has not padded those flights as much YET.




I think that #1 is not particularly likely, as the 10 minutes later could affect either of the two, though B6 may take in to account where the inbound is coming to JFK from in terms of potential for delay.

My guess is that the real reason is that for some reason the folks in scheduling think that the SFO routing is more likely to get priority on approach in the Bay-area airspace so it gets the shorter block time. Or they are just guessing, like the rest of us :cool: