Carrier route record
B6BOS→PHL
JetBlue Airways · Boston to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 892
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 18%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with JetBlue Airways.
JetBlue on BOS to PHL 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 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 892 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,763 at 79.1% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so JetBlue on BOS to PHL runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 53 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 870 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.47%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.5%
Every carrier on BOS to PHL, 4,961 flights
These figures cover 892 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.3% 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 PHL
JetBlue flew 892 of the 4,961 flights on BOS to PHL, about 18% of it. Its 72.3% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 82.1% to JetBlue at 72.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 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 | 57 | 82.1% | 55 min | 1.75% | B |
| Republic Airways | 1,763 | 79.1% | 69 min | 3.29% | B− |
| American Airlines | 2,249 | 75.9% | 109 min | 2.85% | B |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 892 | 72.3% | 68 min | 2.47% | C |
Republic Airways cancels 3.3% 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.
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 48 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am178 flights93.6%
- 8am–11am80 flights76.9%
- 11am–2pm102 flights78.4%
- 2pm–5pm266 flights72.5%
- 5pm–8pm154 flights61.2%
- 8pm–5am112 flights45.5%
Scale runs 35% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 45.5% on time, against 93.6% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 266 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on BOS to PHL through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 84.5% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. October was the busiest month here, with 114 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 60.0%. 21 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why JetBlue runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 16,000 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.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
56% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 56 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 16,475 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 93.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.47% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
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. 12.3% 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 280 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 runs 72.8% on time across 892 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 892 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 JetBlue on BOS to PHL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 892 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 72.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 870 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BOS to PHL, every carrier
- JetBlue on PHL to BOS, the return leg
- Republic Airways on BOS to PHL79.1%
- American Airlines on BOS to PHL75.9%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.