Route reliability record
BOS→CLE
Boston to Cleveland
- Flights
- 1,682
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 563 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four 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 1,682 BOS to CLE flights, of which Republic Airways flew 868 at 77.8% on time.
Best time to fly BOS to CLE: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 81.0%, against 76.9% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,641 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.26%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
77.8% on time across 868 flights
These figures cover 1,682 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BOS to CLE
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 89 | 80.7% | 75 min | 1.12% | B |
| Republic Airways | 868 | 77.8% | 62 min | 2.42% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 725 | 75.4% | 76 min | 2.21% | B |
No carrier stands out. Republic tops the table at 77.8%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on BOS to CLE
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Boston to Cleveland
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BOS → CLEBoston to Cleveland | Republic Airways | 75.9% | 77.8% | 2.42% | 8am–11am, Sat | YX 5641 14:55 |
| 2. BOS → CLEBoston to Cleveland | JetBlue Airways | 73.7% | 75.4% | 2.21% | 5am–8am, Wed | B6 641 11:50 |
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 32 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am89 flights90.9%
- 8am–11am482 flights86.9%
- 11am–2pm199 flights82.8%
- 2pm–5pm287 flights86.0%
- 5pm–8pm265 flights63.1%
- 8pm–5am360 flights58.8%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.8% on time, against 90.9% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 482 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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.
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 63.1%. June is the strongest month at 84.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 21 points. July was the busiest month here, with 178 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.1%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 26,000 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
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 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 22 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 26,079 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 9,232 of the 26,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.26% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.18%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 563 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 78.8% on time across 1,682 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,682 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 CLE 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. June runs 84.5% on time and March 63.1%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,641 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BOS to CLE questions
How often is BOS to CLE 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 23.1% of the 1,682 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on BOS to CLE?
Republic Airways leads at 77.8% on time across 868 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 75.4%, a gap of 2 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 BOS to CLE?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 58.8%, 32 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 March delays on BOS to CLE?
March is the weakest month at 63.1% on time, compared with 84.5% in June. Across the year that is 21 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
- CLE to BOS — the return legseparate record
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on BOS to CLE77.8%
- JetBlue Airways on BOS to CLE75.4%
- BOS to DCA, a related route74.0%
- ORD to CLE, a related route70.1%
- BOS to ORD, a related route72.7%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record80.7%
- Republic Airways on-time record77.8%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record75.4%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. BOS to CLE and CLE to BOS 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.