Route reliability record
BOS→RIC
Boston to Richmond
- Flights
- 1,691
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 473 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.7% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,691 BOS to RIC flights, of which Republic Airways flew 934 at 79.3% on time.
Best time to fly BOS to RIC: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 81.0%, against 76.7% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
76.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,624 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.67%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Republic
79.3% on time across 934 flights
These figures cover 1,691 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.9% 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 BOS to RIC
The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 934 | 79.3% | 62 min | 3.43% | B− |
| JetBlue Airways | 757 | 73.4% | 65 min | 3.96% | C− |
JetBlue Airways cancels 4.0% 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 BOS to RIC
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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Boston to Richmond
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 → RICBoston to Richmond | Republic Airways | 76.6% | 79.3% | 3.43% | 8am–11am, Mon | YX 5665 16:10 |
| 2. BOS → RICBoston to Richmond | JetBlue Airways | 70.5% | 73.4% | 3.96% | 5am–8am, Wed | B6 1281 07:00 |
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 29 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am146 flights93.4%
- 8am–11am461 flights87.9%
- 11am–2pm91 flights72.9%
- 2pm–5pm504 flights70.8%
- 5pm–8pm118 flights64.9%
- 8pm–5am371 flights68.6%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.9% on time, against 93.4% 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 504 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BOS to RIC 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 BOS to RIC, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.4% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 64.9%, a wide gap of 28.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.4%
- 8–11am87.9%
- 11am–2pm72.9%
- 2–5pm70.8%
- 5–8pm64.9%
- 8pm–5am68.6%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
January is the weak month at 65.9% on time, against 89.0% in June. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 177 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.8%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 24,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
49% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 26 to one. The split is drawn from 23,964 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 8,227 of the 24,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.67%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly 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 actually costs
9.9% 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 473 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 77.3% on time across 1,693 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,691 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 RIC after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.67% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 1,624 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BOS to RIC questions
How often is BOS to RIC delayed?
About 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 23.3% of the 1,691 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on BOS to RIC?
Republic Airways leads at 79.3% on time across 934 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 73.4%, a gap of 6 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 RIC?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 64.9%, 29 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 January delays on BOS to RIC?
January is the weakest month at 65.9% on time, compared with 89.0% in June. Across the year that is 23 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
- RIC to BOS — the return legseparate record
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on BOS to RIC79.3%
- JetBlue Airways on BOS to RIC73.4%
- BOS to DCA, a related route72.6%
- ATL to RIC, a related route81.6%
- BOS to ORD, a related route71.9%
- Republic Airways on-time record79.3%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record73.4%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. BOS to RIC and RIC 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.