Carrier route record
B6DCA→BOS
JetBlue Airways · Washington to Boston
- Flights
- 2,624
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 29%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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: 5.1% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,624 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 3,998 at 76.9% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so JetBlue on DCA to BOS runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 140 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,488 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.14%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
70.1%
Every carrier on DCA to BOS, 9,104 flights
These figures cover 2,624 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 19.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
JetBlue against every carrier on DCA to BOS
JetBlue flew 2,624 of the 9,104 flights on DCA to BOS, about 29% of it. Its 63.3% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 87.5% to JetBlue at 63.3%. 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 76.9% of the time; American Airlines manages 65.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,233 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 8 | 87.5% | 53 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airways | 3,998 | 76.9% | 70 min | 4.40% | B− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 241 | 73.1% | 65 min | 7.47% | C− |
| American Airlines | 2,233 | 65.5% | 84 min | 2.96% | C |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 2,624 | 63.3% | 89 min | 5.14% | D− |
Republic Airways cancels 4.4% 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
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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 40 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am183 flights88.5%
- 8am–11am369 flights84.5%
- 11am–2pm583 flights68.3%
- 2pm–5pm447 flights54.4%
- 5pm–8pm693 flights48.2%
- 8pm–5am349 flights59.9%
Scale runs 40% to 95%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 48.2% 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 693 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%. January is the strongest month at 70.2%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 21 points. March was the busiest month here, with 254 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 79.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 55.7%, a spread of 23 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late JetBlue on DCA to BOS runs when it is late
When JetBlue on DCA to BOS is late it tends to be very late: 475 of its 914 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 194 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early539 flights21.7%
- Within 15 min1,035 flights41.6%
- 15–29 min late193 flights7.8%
- 30–59 min late246 flights9.9%
- 1–2 hours late281 flights11.3%
- 2+ hours late194 flights7.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 2,488 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 909 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 90 made it up before arrival. 95 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for JetBlue on DCA to BOS
The latest arrival of the period was on 18 January 2026, 14 hours 33 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 18 January 2026 | 14 hours 33 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 March 2026 | 14 hours 3 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 June 2026 | 13 hours 30 minutes | Carrier |
| 1 April 2026 | 12 hours 56 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 1 April 2026 | 12 hours 19 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why JetBlue runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 81,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 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. Across 81,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 50 to one. The split is drawn from 81,076 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 27,000 minutes out of 81,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 5.14%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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
19.1% 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 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 66.3% on time across 2,626 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 2,624 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 5.14% 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. 2,488 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 BOS76.9%
- Envoy Air on DCA to BOS73.1%
- American Airlines on DCA to BOS65.5%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.