Route reliability record
BUF→BOS
Buffalo to Boston
- Flights
- 1,349
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 395 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% 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 1,349 BUF to BOS flights, of which Republic Airways flew 386 at 85.8% on time.
Best time to fly BUF to BOS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.6% of the time and Saturday flights 82.1%, against 75.7% 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
75.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,302 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.48%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Republic
85.8% on time across 386 flights
These figures cover 1,349 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 BUF to BOS
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 85.8% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 71.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 888 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 386 | 85.8% | 75 min | 3.11% | A− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 75 | 74.7% | 101 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 888 | 71.4% | 78 min | 3.94% | C− |
JetBlue 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
Flights on BUF to BOS
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 Buffalo to Boston
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. BUF → BOSBuffalo to Boston | Republic Airways | 83.1% | 85.8% | 3.11% | 8am–11am, Mon | — |
| 2. BUF → BOSBuffalo to Boston | JetBlue Airways | 68.6% | 71.4% | 3.94% | 5am–8am, Sat | B6 716 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 46 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am349 flights89.6%
- 8am–11am349 flights80.2%
- 11am–2pm220 flights77.2%
- 2pm–5pm189 flights67.6%
- 5pm–8pm162 flights59.1%
- 8pm–5am80 flights43.8%
Scale runs 35% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 43.8% on time, against 89.6% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 349 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BUF to BOS 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 BUF to BOS, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 89.6% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 43.8%, a wide gap of 45.8 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am89.6%
- 8–11am80.2%
- 11am–2pm77.2%
- 2–5pm67.6%
- 5–8pm59.1%
- 8pm–5am43.8%
best all US flightsScale 35% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 34 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 55.3% on time, against 89.7% in May. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 183 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 82.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 73.4%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 25,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 to one. The split is drawn from 25,016 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 89.6% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.48%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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.
At 395 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 73.3% on time across 1,349 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 1,349 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 BOS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.48% 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. 1,302 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BUF to BOS questions
How often is BUF to BOS 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 24.3% of the 1,349 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on BUF to BOS?
Republic Airways leads at 85.8% on time across 386 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 71.4%, a gap of 14 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 BUF to BOS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 43.8%, 46 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 BUF to BOS?
January is the weakest month at 55.3% on time, compared with 89.7% in May. Across the year that is 34 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
- BOS to BUF — the return legseparate record
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on BUF to BOS85.8%
- JetBlue Airways on BUF to BOS71.4%
- BUF to ORD, a related route74.4%
- DCA to BOS, a related route70.1%
- BUF to MCO, a related route75.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record85.8%
- Envoy Air on-time record74.7%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record71.4%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. BUF to BOS and BOS to BUF 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.