Carrier route record
B6BOS→DCA
JetBlue Airways · Boston to Washington
- Flights
- 2,634
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 29%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with JetBlue Airways.
JetBlue on BOS to DCA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,634 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 2,262 at 76.5% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so JetBlue on BOS to DCA runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 88 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,523 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.80%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.0%
Every carrier on BOS to DCA, 9,082 flights
These figures cover 2,634 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.0% 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
JetBlue against every carrier on BOS to DCA
JetBlue flew 2,634 of the 9,082 flights on BOS to DCA, about 29% of it. Its 68.8% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 82.7% to Delta at 33.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 198 | 82.7% | 59 min | 5.56% | B− |
| American Airlines | 2,262 | 76.5% | 93 min | 3.23% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 3,985 | 75.6% | 62 min | 4.22% | B− |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 2,634 | 68.8% | 72 min | 3.80% | C− |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 3 | 33.3% | 46 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Republic Airways cancels 4.2% 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
JetBlue flight numbers on BOS to DCA
Departure window
When JetBlue runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 44 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am343 flights90.5%
- 8am–11am625 flights84.1%
- 11am–2pm510 flights71.5%
- 2pm–5pm622 flights57.9%
- 5pm–8pm460 flights46.5%
- 8pm–5am74 flights52.2%
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 46.5% on time, against 90.5% 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 625 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on BOS to DCA through the year
December is the weak month at 57.9% on time, against 82.6% in August. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 254 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 79.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 61.9%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why JetBlue runs late on this route
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 56,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 39%National Airspace System
- 19%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
40% 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 56,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 24 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 56,365 reported delay minutes.
39% 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 22,000 minutes out of 56,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.80%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.0% 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.
At 399 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 65.8% on time across 2,633 flights, 3 points below 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,634 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.
What to do with this
Booking JetBlue on BOS to DCA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.80% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 2,523 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BOS to DCA, every carrier
- JetBlue on DCA to BOS, the return leg
- Envoy Air on BOS to DCA82.7%
- American Airlines on BOS to DCA76.5%
- Republic Airways on BOS to DCA75.6%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.