Route reliability record
CLE→BOS
Cleveland to Boston
- Flights
- 1,620
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 563 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B−, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 1,620 CLE to BOS flights, of which Republic Airways flew 881 at 82.7% on time.
Best time to fly CLE to BOS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.6% of the time and Saturday flights 83.5%, against 77.7% 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
77.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,570 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.09%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Republic
82.7% on time across 881 flights
These figures cover 1,620 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.8% 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 CLE to BOS
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 82.7% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 70.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 672 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 67 | 87.9% | 47 min | 1.49% | A |
| Republic Airways | 881 | 82.7% | 75 min | 2.72% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 672 | 70.0% | 76 min | 3.72% | C− |
JetBlue Airways cancels 3.7% 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 CLE 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 Cleveland 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. CLE → BOSCleveland to Boston | Republic Airways | 80.5% | 82.7% | 2.72% | 5am–8am, Sat | YX 5684 06:00 |
| 2. CLE → BOSCleveland to Boston | JetBlue Airways | 67.4% | 70.0% | 3.72% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 37 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am527 flights88.6%
- 8am–11am215 flights82.0%
- 11am–2pm366 flights82.6%
- 2pm–5pm230 flights59.5%
- 5pm–8pm227 flights64.2%
- 8pm–5am55 flights51.9%
Scale runs 45% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 51.9% on time, against 88.6% 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 527 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CLE 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 CLE to BOS, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 88.6% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 51.9%, a wide gap of 36.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am88.6%
- 8–11am82.0%
- 11am–2pm82.6%
- 2–5pm59.5%
- 5–8pm64.2%
- 8pm–5am51.9%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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.
December is the weak month at 67.2% on time, against 88.4% in April. 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 179 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 83.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 73.2%, a spread of 10 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 26,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%National Airspace System
- 30%Carrier
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
39% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 10,000 minutes out of 26,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 26,092 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.09%, 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
9.8% 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 563 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 76.8% on time across 1,620 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 1,620 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 3.09% 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. 1,570 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLE to BOS questions
How often is CLE to BOS delayed?
Roughly 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 22.3% of the 1,620 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 CLE to BOS?
Republic Airways leads at 82.7% on time across 881 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 70.0%, a gap of 13 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 CLE to BOS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 51.9%, 37 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 December delays on CLE to BOS?
December is the weakest month at 67.2% on time, compared with 88.4% in April. Across the year that is 21 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 CLE — the return legseparate record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on CLE to BOS82.7%
- JetBlue Airways on CLE to BOS70.0%
- CLE to ORD, a related route74.5%
- DCA to BOS, a related route70.1%
- CLE to ATL, a related route84.6%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record87.9%
- Republic Airways on-time record82.7%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record70.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. CLE to BOS and BOS to CLE 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.