Carrier route record
B6JFK→BOS
JetBlue Airways · New York to Boston
- Flights
- 2,460
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 43%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with JetBlue Airways.
JetBlue on JFK to BOS carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.1% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten 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 2,460 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 2,916 at 77.8% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so JetBlue on JFK to BOS runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 79 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,360 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.07%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.7%
Every carrier on JFK to BOS, 5,744 flights
These figures cover 2,460 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.5% 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 JFK to BOS
JetBlue flew 2,460 of the 5,744 flights on JFK to BOS, about 43% of it. Its 69.7% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 77.8% to Delta at 68.8%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 77.8% of the time; Delta Air Lines manages 68.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 368 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 2,916 | 77.8% | 74 min | 4.39% | B− |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 2,460 | 69.7% | 79 min | 4.07% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines | 368 | 68.8% | 93 min | 3.26% | C− |
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 JFK 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 31 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am373 flights88.6%
- 8am–11am400 flights82.4%
- 11am–2pm345 flights73.5%
- 2pm–5pm516 flights58.6%
- 5pm–8pm337 flights57.1%
- 8pm–5am489 flights61.7%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.1% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 516 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on JFK to BOS through the year
December is the weak month at 60.2% on time, against 81.8% 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. September was the busiest month here, with 244 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 75.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.3%. 15 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 43% of the 56,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
43% 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 56,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 31 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 56,223 reported delay minutes.
34% 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 19,000 minutes out of 56,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 4.07%, 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. 13.5% 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 187 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 73.6% on time across 2,455 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,460 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 JFK to BOS
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.07% 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. 2,360 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to BOS, every carrier
- JetBlue on BOS to JFK, the return leg
- Republic Airways on JFK to BOS77.8%
- Delta Air Lines on JFK to BOS68.8%
- JetBlue Airways network-wide record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.