Route reliability record
BOS→RIC
Boston to Richmond
- Flights
- 1,694
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 473 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,694 BOS to RIC flights, of which Republic Airways flew 937 at 80.1% on time.
Best time to fly BOS to RIC: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 81.2%, against 76.4% 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
76.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,643 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.72%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
80.1% on time across 937 flights
These figures cover 1,694 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% 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
Which airline is most reliable on BOS to RIC
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 80.1% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 72.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 757 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 937 | 80.1% | 62 min | 2.77% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 757 | 72.0% | 65 min | 2.64% | C |
Republic leads JetBlue by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh 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.
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 | 77.9% | 80.1% | 2.77% | 8am–11am, Sat | YX 5665 15:35 |
| 2. BOS → RICBoston to Richmond | JetBlue Airways | 70.1% | 72.0% | 2.64% | 5am–8am, Wed | B6 1281 11:49 |
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 27 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am84 flights92.6%
- 8am–11am461 flights88.5%
- 11am–2pm144 flights74.8%
- 2pm–5pm464 flights73.6%
- 5pm–8pm110 flights65.4%
- 8pm–5am431 flights66.5%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.6% of the time, against 65.4% for the evening window. That is 27 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 464 flights scheduled in it.
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 81.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.1%. 11 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 48% of the 25,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
48% 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 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 28 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 24,744 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 8,544 of the 25,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.72%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.3% 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 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 78.4% on time across 1,696 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 1,694 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 calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. June runs 89.0% on time and January 65.9%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,643 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 23.6% of the 1,694 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on BOS to RIC?
Republic Airways leads at 80.1% on time across 937 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 72.0%, a gap of 8 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 92.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 65.4%, 27 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 RIC80.1%
- JetBlue Airways on BOS to RIC72.0%
- BOS to DCA, a related route74.0%
- ATL to RIC, a related route81.2%
- BOS to ORD, a related route72.7%
- Republic Airways on-time record80.1%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record72.0%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.