Flight profile · JetBlue
B6281
New York (JFK) to Houston (IAH) · scheduled 6:00 AM – 8:38 AM
How B6281 performs
630 operations, July 2023 – July 2026.
B6281 arrived on time 69.8% of the time, against 71.9% for all JFK → IAH flights, so this departure is 2.1 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against JetBlue’s own flights on this route it is 1.6 points better.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 630 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If B6281 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where B6281 is right now
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Against the rest of the route
| Flight or route | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B6281 | 69.8% | 1.75% | -1 min | 11.1% | 630 |
| JetBlue on JFK → IAH | 68.2% | 1.99% | 0 min | 11.7% | 855 |
| All JFK → IAH flights | 71.9% | 2.40% | -4 min | 10.6% | 1,124 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
Why B6281 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for B6281 on JFK → IAH. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Does a late aircraft delay this flight?
How often the plane that flies B6281 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
The aircraft flying B6281 came in 15 or more minutes late on 23% of the departures where its previous flight is known. There are not enough departures in both groups to say how the flight left after a late one and after an on-time one.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into JFK just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 408 of 619 departures in all. A departure is left out when that flight is unknown, was cancelled or diverted, or the aircraft had sat for more than 12 hours. A flight the airline cancelled never left and is not in the count, and one flown by a substitute aircraft is matched to the aircraft that flew it, not to the one first planned.
Against the network at the same turn length
| Share of departures | Inbound landed 15+ late |
|---|---|
| B6281 | 23% |
| Network, same turn | 23% |
The schedule leaves a long gap on the ground, which gives a late aircraft room to catch up before this flight pushes back.
The network row is every flight with a scheduled turn of 90 minutes to 3 hours. How often B6281’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is about the same as the network’s. There are not enough departures in both groups to compare how it left.
More: Which Flight Numbers Pay for a Late Aircraft lists the flight numbers that pass a late aircraft on.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves JFK late, does that still matter by the time it reaches IAH?
B6281 pushes back an average of 17.8 minutes late and reaches the gate at IAH an average of 12.8 minutes late. The 4.9 minutes between those two figures are slack the published schedule already carries, which is why a late pushback on this flight does not reliably become a late arrival. It spends 25.5 minutes on the taxiways at JFK, 4.7 minutes longer than a typical JFK departure in the same hour.
On arrival at IAH, B6281 spends 12.2 min taxiing from touchdown to the gate — ground time a connecting passenger sits through before they can even leave the aircraft, on top of however late the flight itself ran. That is 1.5 minutes longer than a typical IAH arrival (10.7 min).
Departure delay is averaged over every pushback and arrival delay over every completed arrival, so the two counts differ by the flights that never reached IAH. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 21,099 departures from JFK scheduled in the clock hour B6281 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at IAH (359,471 flights), not just B6281’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
The hour it leaves JFK
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. B6281 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 21,099 departures from JFK are scheduled in the 6 AM–7 AM hour over the period, against 351,635 across the whole day.
B6281 is scheduled out of JFK at 6:00 AM, in the 6 AM–7 AM bank. Departures from JFK in that hour arrive on time 87.0% of the time against 77.0% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 10.0 points better before anything about this particular flight is considered.
The two airport figures cover every departure from JFK to every destination, so they describe the slot rather than this journey — the like-for-like comparison against the route is above. Hours are scheduled local, and a number whose schedule moved between banks inside the period has no single hour and is not described here at all. Why the hour matters.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.
When it goes wrong
The average describes a usual day. This is the day that ruins a connection.
67 min late
against a median of 1 min early
B6281 has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 1 min early, but the worst tenth are 68 minutes worse than that. If the trip has something unmissable at the end of it, the median is the wrong number to plan against.
Percentiles over 630 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 630 records of B6281 operating JFK → IAH, published by the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics. A flight counts as delayed when it arrives 15 or more minutes after schedule. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and reported separately. Flight numbers are resolved as carrier plus number plus route, because the same number serves different routes over time.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: Most and Least Reliable Flight Numbers · The Delay You Inherit · Making Up Time in the Air
Analysis last recomputed