Carrier route record
B6BOS→DCA
JetBlue Airways · Boston to Washington
- Flights
- 2,626
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 29%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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: 4.9% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three 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 2,626 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 3,999 at 75.1% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so JetBlue on BOS to DCA runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 110 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,487 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.87%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
72.6%
Every carrier on BOS to DCA, 9,105 flights
These figures cover 2,626 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
JetBlue against every carrier on BOS to DCA
JetBlue flew 2,626 of the 9,105 flights on BOS to DCA, about 29% of it. Its 66.3% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 78.5% to Delta at 42.9%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: half 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 | 241 | 78.5% | 68 min | 6.64% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 3,999 | 75.1% | 62 min | 3.90% | B− |
| American Airlines | 2,231 | 75.1% | 88 min | 3.27% | B− |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 2,626 | 66.3% | 74 min | 4.87% | C− |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 8 | 42.9% | 45 min | 12.50% | F− |
Republic Airways cancels 3.9% 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
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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 46 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am335 flights89.5%
- 8am–11am628 flights83.0%
- 11am–2pm448 flights66.0%
- 2pm–5pm621 flights56.9%
- 5pm–8pm460 flights45.6%
- 8pm–5am134 flights44.0%
Scale runs 35% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 44.0% on time, against 89.5% 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 628 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on BOS to DCA through the year
July is the worst month at 56.3% on time, 17 points below October, the best at 73.1%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 254 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 76.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 59.4%, a spread of 17 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late JetBlue on BOS to DCA runs when it is late
The 839 late arrivals split 230 under half an hour, 241 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 368 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early582 flights23.4%
- Within 15 min1,066 flights42.9%
- 15–29 min late230 flights9.2%
- 30–59 min late241 flights9.7%
- 1–2 hours late222 flights8.9%
- 2+ hours late146 flights5.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 2,487 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
96 of 757 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 13% of them. In the other direction, 178 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DCA.
The worst days
Worst days for JetBlue on BOS to DCA
The latest arrival of the period was on 9 July 2026, 11 hours 29 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 9 July 2026 | 11 hours 29 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 20 December 2025 | 7 hours 49 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 29 July 2026 | 7 hours 46 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 February 2026 | 7 hours 23 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 August 2026 | 6 hours 50 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why JetBlue runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 62,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%National Airspace System
- 18%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 62,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 29 to one. The split is drawn from 62,277 reported delay minutes.
37% 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 23,000 minutes out of 62,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 4.87%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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
14.8% 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.
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 63.3% on time across 2,624 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 2,626 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 4.87% 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. 2,487 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 DCA78.5%
- Republic Airways on BOS to DCA75.1%
- American Airlines on BOS to DCA75.1%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.