Route reliability record
BOS→RSW
Boston to Fort Myers
- Flights
- 2,167
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,249 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,167 BOS to RSW flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 549 at 79.5% on time.
Best time to fly BOS to RSW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 77.8%, against 70.4% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 69 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,098 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.77%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
79.5% on time across 549 flights
These figures cover 2,167 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.1% 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 RSW
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 79.5% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 68.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,543 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 549 | 79.5% | 65 min | 1.28% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,543 | 68.6% | 68 min | 2.92% | C |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 75 | 34.3% | 52 min | 10.67% | F− |
Delta leads JetBlue by 11 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on BOS to RSW
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 Fort Myers
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 → RSWBoston to Fort Myers | Delta Air Lines | 78.5% | 79.5% | 1.28% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 2474 07:30 |
| 2. BOS → RSWBoston to Fort Myers | JetBlue Airways | 66.6% | 68.6% | 2.92% | 5am–8am, Wed | B6 165 06:45 |
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 11 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am705 flights85.1%
- 8am–11am188 flights75.5%
- 11am–2pm311 flights66.0%
- 2pm–5pm566 flights57.7%
- 5pm–8pm290 flights61.6%
- 8pm–5am107 flights68.0%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 85.1% of the time, against 57.7% for the afternoon 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 705 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BOS to RSW 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 RSW, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 85.1% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 57.7%, a wide gap of 27.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am85.1%
- 8–11am75.5%
- 11am–2pm66.0%
- 2–5pm57.7%
- 5–8pm61.6%
- 8pm–5am68.0%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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 56.8% on time, against 84.5% 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. March was the busiest month here, with 326 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 77.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.7%, a spread of 15 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 41,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 3%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. Across 41,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 to one. The split is drawn from 41,147 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 85.1% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.77%, against 1.89% 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
11.1% 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.
The 1,249 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg runs 69.5% on time across 2,168 flights, within about 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 2,167 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 RSW 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 84.5% on time and January 56.8%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 2,098 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BOS to RSW questions
How often is BOS to RSW delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 29.6% of the 2,167 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 RSW?
Delta Air Lines leads at 79.5% on time across 549 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 68.6%, a gap of 11 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 RSW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.1% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 57.7%, 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 RSW?
January is the weakest month at 56.8% on time, compared with 84.5% in June. Across the year that is 28 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
- RSW to BOS — the return legseparate record
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- Southwest Florida International (RSW) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on BOS to RSW79.5%
- JetBlue Airways on BOS to RSW68.6%
- BOS to DCA, a related route72.6%
- ORD to RSW, a related route75.6%
- BOS to ORD, a related route71.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record79.5%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record68.6%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record34.3%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. BOS to RSW and RSW 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.