Carrier route record
B6DCA→BOS
JetBlue Airways · Washington to Boston
- Flights
- 2,633
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 29%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with JetBlue Airways.
JetBlue on DCA to BOS carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.9% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,633 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 3,983 at 77.9% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so JetBlue on DCA to BOS runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 118 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,530 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.91%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.4%
Every carrier on DCA to BOS, 9,081 flights
These figures cover 2,633 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.3% 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
JetBlue against every carrier on DCA to BOS
JetBlue flew 2,633 of the 9,081 flights on DCA to BOS, about 29% of it. Its 65.8% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 77.9% to JetBlue at 65.8%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 77.9% of the time; American Airlines manages 66.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,264 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 3,983 | 77.9% | 70 min | 4.22% | B− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 198 | 76.9% | 75 min | 6.06% | B− |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 3 | 66.7% | 53 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| American Airlines | 2,264 | 66.1% | 81 min | 3.05% | C− |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 2,633 | 65.8% | 90 min | 3.91% | C− |
Republic Airways cancels 4.2% 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
JetBlue flight numbers on DCA to BOS
Departure window
When JetBlue runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 37 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am183 flights88.5%
- 8am–11am430 flights85.5%
- 11am–2pm589 flights70.7%
- 2pm–5pm446 flights54.6%
- 5pm–8pm695 flights51.3%
- 8pm–5am290 flights63.6%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.3% on time, against 88.5% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 695 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on DCA to BOS through the year
Delays peak in September, when the on-time rate falls to 49.5%. August is the strongest month at 79.4%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 30 points. March was the busiest month here, with 254 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 82.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.8%. 25 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why JetBlue runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 77,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%National Airspace System
- 16%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
50% 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 77,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 50 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 77,495 reported delay minutes.
33% 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 25,000 minutes out of 77,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.91%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 17.3% 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 399 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 68.8% on time across 2,634 flights, 3 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,633 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.
What to do with this
Booking JetBlue on DCA to BOS
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.91% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 2,530 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to BOS, every carrier
- JetBlue on BOS to DCA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on DCA to BOS77.9%
- Envoy Air on DCA to BOS76.9%
- American Airlines on DCA to BOS66.1%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.