Route reliability record
CLE→BOS
Cleveland to Boston
- Flights
- 1,682
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 563 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,682 CLE to BOS flights, of which Republic Airways flew 868 at 83.7% on time.
Best time to fly CLE to BOS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.1% of the time and Saturday flights 87.0%, against 78.8% 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
78.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,644 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.26%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
83.7% on time across 868 flights
These figures cover 1,682 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% 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 CLE to BOS
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 83.7% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 71.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 726 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 88 | 90.7% | 47 min | 2.27% | A |
| Republic Airways | 868 | 83.7% | 70 min | 2.19% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 726 | 71.5% | 75 min | 2.34% | C |
The spread between Republic and JetBlue is 12 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 12 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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.
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 | 81.9% | 83.7% | 2.19% | 5am–8am, Sat | YX 5684 06:00 |
| 2. CLE → BOSCleveland to Boston | JetBlue Airways | 69.8% | 71.5% | 2.34% | 5am–8am, Sat | B6 640 14:41 |
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 38 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am610 flights90.1%
- 8am–11am165 flights80.2%
- 11am–2pm397 flights82.1%
- 2pm–5pm231 flights61.3%
- 5pm–8pm224 flights65.1%
- 8pm–5am55 flights51.9%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 51.9% on time, against 90.1% 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 610 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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 90.8% in August. 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 87.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.2%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 25,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%National Airspace System
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
41% 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 25,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 25,088 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 90.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.26% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
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. 9.7% 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.
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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 76.9% on time across 1,682 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 1,682 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 calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. August runs 90.8% on time and December 67.2%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,644 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLE to BOS questions
How often is CLE to BOS delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.2% of the 1,682 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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 83.7% on time across 868 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 71.5%, a gap of 12 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 90.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 51.9%, 38 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 90.8% in August. Across the year that is 24 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 BOS83.7%
- JetBlue Airways on CLE to BOS71.5%
- CLE to ORD, a related route74.6%
- DCA to BOS, a related route71.4%
- CLE to ATL, a related route85.4%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record90.7%
- Republic Airways on-time record83.7%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record71.5%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.