Is JetBlue usually late?
 

:confused:In my first time flying jetBlue, both of my flights were delayed by 30 minutes. Is this a normal occurrence?

Unless it was a 60 minute flight, 30 minutes on any airline is not really very late.

I know i was just wondering if they are usually late.

By most people's definition of your experience, no, and by your definition, yes.

There is a JetBlue forum here so this should be moved there as 1,000's of JetBlueians are probably ready to offer up their opinions.

Let's share this question with the readers of the JetBlue forum. I'll move this thread there. Ocn Vw 1K, Senior Moderator.

You should take a look at the DOT statistics for on-time performance. They are published quarterly for all US carriers and you can draw your own conclusions.

Tiny sample sizes don't lead to many useful conclusions. For instance, in very bad weather, most flights are delayed. If you take 4 flights in very bad weather, having only 2 flights delayed by 30 minutes is great.

Usually? No. More than half the flights arrive within 15 minutes of schedule which, to the DoT, is on time.

More than the competition? Typically, yes. Though that varies month-to-month.

I'd say it depends on the route

I"d say it depends on time of day, too. When I catch the first flight of the day (e.g. pre-700am departure) it usually operates on time. By late afternoon / evening rush hour I have lousy luck. The B6 timetable seems to unravel by sundown.

Flying BUF to JFK, delays usually happen for flights past noon. Granted, the delays are usually less than one hour.

In the May 2019 DOT Air Traffic Consumer Report JetBlue ranked last, 10/10, for on-time arrivals with having only 73.8% of flights arrive on time. I would yes delays on JetBlue are very likely to occur.

The industry average among all 10 airlines was 80.9%.

That has a lot to do with the airports they operate out of. For example so far in June, you will see that B6 consistently has been better than average at BOS in OTP while DL is below average.

you can check here
https://www.transtats.bts.gov/OT_Del...ause1.asp?pn=1
For example for April at BOS,
airport wide is 72.16%
B6 was 70.22%

For JFK,
airport wide was 75.89%
B6 was 74.41%

So JetBlue is a little below average at its primary 2 airports but nothing as bad as people make it out to be. And given that more of its flights from these airports are to other airports with delay issues, it's not entirely unreasonable to expect it to be a little below average in OTP compared to average of the airport.

A sample size of two is pretty meaningless. Nothing to draw from.

Agreed, and that is only looking at 1 month at 2 airports which DL has a higher average than B6 on both.

Also I am going to lean on the DOT reports where month after month B6 consistently ranks in 8th 9th or 10th place for on time arrivals and DL consistently ranks in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place for on-time arrivals, and number 1 for least amount of cancellations.

Fine, let's go with August of last year until April of this year. I picked August because that was when the pilot agreement got accepted. Is that long enough for the good folks here?
At JFK
B6 73.78%
All 77.61%

At BOS
B6 70.94%
All 73.59%

So they are a little worse than average, but nothing crazy. Keep in mind that a lot of their OTP initiatives have been launched recently, which is why I picked the more recent months.

And for DL, you do realize those numbers are for just mainline? It looks a lot worse when you look at 9E and other regionals.

And only recently has DL added enough flights at BOS for the gates to really be fully used and those June OTP numbers have been terrible.