Flight number record

B6 988

JetBlue Airways · Los Angeles to Boston

Route: LAX → BOS
Departs: 21:45
Flights: 342
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s B6 988, check with JetBlue Airways.

B6 988 lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 342 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

On time

78.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 335 completed flights

Avg delay

77 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.05%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

7.8%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 342 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Schedule

When B6 988 flies

B6 988 flies LAX to BOS without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 21:45, used on 68 of 342 flights, with 23:15 (52 flights) and 20:38 (38 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 21:4568 flights19.9%
Departs 23:1552 flights15.2%
Departs 20:3838 flights11.1%

Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.

A 21:45 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.5%, and B6 988 runs 8 points better at 78.8%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

Against the route

B6 988 next to LAX to BOS

Every carrier on LAX to BOS combined arrived on time 78.4% of the time across 4,718 flights, so B6 988 is about level with it. JetBlue flew 1,626 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 75.8% on time. Across its whole network JetBlue Airways managed 72.7%, which this flight beats by 6 points.

B6 988 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
B6 988thin sample	342	78.8%	77 min	2.05%	B
All JetBlue Airways on LAX–BOS	1,626	75.8%	73 min	1.41%	B
All carriers on LAX–BOS	4,718	78.4%	81 min	1.42%	B
JetBlue Airways, whole network	234,468	72.7%	76 min	2.56%	C

Across the year

B6 988 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter B6 988 held fairly steady: 80.4% in Jul–Sep 2025, 79.8% in Oct–Dec 2025, 79.1% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 75.0% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights80.4%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights79.8%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights79.1%
Apr–Jun 202669 flights75.0%

Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, B6 988 did best on Wednesday at 89.6% on time and worst on Sunday at 66.0%. Each day rests on about 49 flights, so a gap of 24 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why B6 988 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 5,459 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
47%
Carrier
39%
National Airspace System
15%

47% 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 5,459 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 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 5,459 delay minutes reported on B6 988.

Cancellations sit at 2.05% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

7.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 2,611 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

Every one of the 342 flights under B6 988 in the data flew LAX to BOS. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 342 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking B6 988

For a booking, read B6 988 as 78.8% on time with 2.05% cancelled over 342 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.

Where to go next

A flight number here means JetBlue Airways’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.

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.

Key figures