Route reliability record
ATL→BOS
Atlanta to Boston
- Flights
- 5,054
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 946 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 about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 5,054 ATL to BOS flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 3,731 at 74.4% on time.
Best time to fly ATL to BOS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.3% of the time and Saturday flights 78.7%, against 72.8% for the route overall.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 74.4% on time across 3,731 flights.
Key figures
On time
72.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,937 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.30%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
74.4% on time across 3,731 flights
These figures cover 5,054 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% 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 ATL to BOS
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 74.4% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 67.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 453 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 3,731 | 74.4% | 61 min | 1.82% | C |
| JetBlue Airways | 857 | 69.2% | 92 min | 4.08% | C− |
| Frontier Airlines | 453 | 67.3% | 54 min | 2.87% | C |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 13 | 61.5% | 57 min | 0.00% | D+ |
JetBlue Airways cancels 4.1% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Flights on ATL to BOS
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.
- Delta 85509:1085.2% · 365 flights
- Delta 86522:4080.2% · 360 flights
- Delta 72613:4566.3% · 353 flights
- Delta 82118:1569.2% · 349 flights
- Delta 98707:2589.9% · 344 flights
- Delta 35012:4074.6% · 339 flights
- Delta 259514:5962.5% · 321 flights
- Delta 30019:5968.8% · 298 flights
- Delta 86211:1081.7% · 281 flights
- Delta 51816:5252.7% · 279 flights
- JetBlue 89612:0662.7% · 275 flights
- Frontier 351205:0573.1% · 255 flights
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Atlanta to Boston
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ATL → PVDAtlanta to Providence | Delta Air Lines | 76.7% | 78.7% | 2.50% | 8am–11am, Wed | DL 2147 09:40 |
| 2. ATL → BOSAtlanta to Boston | Delta Air Lines | 73.0% | 74.4% | 1.82% | 5am–8am, Sat | DL 987 07:25 |
| 3. ATL → BOSAtlanta to Boston | JetBlue Airways | 66.4% | 69.2% | 4.08% | 5am–8am, Sat | B6 896 12:06 |
| 4. ATL → BOSAtlanta to Boston | Frontier Airlines | 65.4% | 67.3% | 2.87% | 5am–8am, Fri | F9 3512 05:05 |
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 25 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am793 flights85.3%
- 8am–11am848 flights85.3%
- 11am–2pm927 flights74.4%
- 2pm–5pm831 flights60.8%
- 5pm–8pm674 flights60.3%
- 8pm–5am981 flights69.4%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.3% on time, against 85.3% 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 981 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ATL to BOS 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 ATL to BOS, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 85.3% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 60.3%, a wide gap of 25.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am85.3%
- 8–11am85.3%
- 11am–2pm74.4%
- 2–5pm60.8%
- 5–8pm60.3%
- 8pm–5am69.4%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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.
July is the worst month at 60.3% on time, 19 points below November, the best at 78.8%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. August was the busiest month here, with 480 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 78.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.5%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 89,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Carrier
- 36%National Airspace System
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 32,000 of the 89,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 88,809 reported delay minutes.
36% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 32,000 minutes out of 89,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 2.30% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.02%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.5% 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 946 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 76.8% on time across 5,050 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 5,054 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 BOS 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. November runs 78.8% on time and July 60.3%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 4,937 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ATL to BOS questions
How often is ATL to BOS 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 27.2% of the 5,054 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ATL to BOS?
Delta Air Lines leads at 74.4% on time across 3,731 flights. Frontier Airlines is at the other end on 67.3%, a gap of 7 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 ATL to BOS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 60.3%, 25 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 July delays on ATL to BOS?
July is the weakest month at 60.3% on time, compared with 78.8% in November. Across the year that is 19 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
- BOS to ATL — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on ATL to BOS74.4%
- JetBlue Airways on ATL to BOS69.2%
- Frontier Airlines on ATL to BOS67.3%
- ATL to LGA, a related route72.3%
- DCA to BOS, a related route70.1%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.3%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record74.4%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record69.2%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record67.3%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. ATL to BOS and BOS to ATL 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.