Route reliability record
LGA→BOS
New York to Boston
- Flights
- 7,443
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 184 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 6.2% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four 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 7,443 LGA to BOS flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 469 at 73.2% on time.
Best time to fly LGA to BOS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.3% of the time and Saturday flights 83.1%, against 73.1% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 42 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 6,980 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.17%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
73.2% on time across 469 flights
These figures cover 7,443 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.6% 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 LGA to BOS
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 469 | 73.2% | 82 min | 4.48% | C− |
| Republic Airways | 6,974 | 73.1% | 70 min | 6.28% | C− |
Republic Airways cancels 6.3% 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 LGA 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 New York to Boston
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. JFK → BOSNew York to Boston | Republic Airways | 71.9% | 75.8% | 5.14% | 5am–8am, Sat | YX 5765 06:00 |
| 2. EWR → BOSNewark to Boston | Republic Airways | 70.1% | 75.1% | 6.70% | 8am–11am, Sat | YX 5718 20:40 |
| 3. LGA → BOSNew York to Boston | Delta Air Lines | 69.9% | 73.2% | 4.48% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 4. EWR → BOSNewark to Boston | United Airlines | 68.6% | 70.9% | 3.19% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 5. LGA → BOSNew York to Boston | Republic Airways | 68.5% | 73.1% | 6.28% | 5am–8am, Sat | YX 5745 11:00 |
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 32 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am877 flights92.3%
- 8am–11am1,541 flights83.8%
- 11am–2pm1,342 flights79.3%
- 2pm–5pm1,401 flights61.6%
- 5pm–8pm1,307 flights60.8%
- 8pm–5am975 flights61.4%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.8% on time, against 92.3% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 1,541 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LGA 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 LGA to BOS, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.3% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 60.8%, a wide gap of 31.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.3%
- 8–11am83.8%
- 11am–2pm79.3%
- 2–5pm61.6%
- 5–8pm60.8%
- 8pm–5am61.4%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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.
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 62.2%. January is the strongest month at 82.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 20 points. July was the busiest month here, with 683 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 83.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.6%, a spread of 17 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 132,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%National Airspace System
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 132,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. The split is drawn from 132,197 reported delay minutes.
36% 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 48,000 minutes out of 132,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 6.17%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in fifteen 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
11.6% 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 184 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 76.2% on time across 7,442 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 7,443 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 6.17% 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. 6,980 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LGA to BOS questions
How often is LGA to BOS delayed?
About 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 26.9% of the 7,443 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 LGA to BOS?
Delta Air Lines leads at 73.2% on time across 469 flights. Republic Airways is at the other end on 73.1%, a gap of half a point. 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 LGA to BOS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 60.8%, 32 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 October delays on LGA to BOS?
October is the weakest month at 62.2% on time, compared with 82.5% in January. Across the year that is 20 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 LGA — the return legseparate record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on LGA to BOS73.2%
- Republic Airways on LGA to BOS73.1%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- DCA to BOS, a related route70.1%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record73.2%
- Republic Airways on-time record73.1%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. LGA to BOS and BOS to LGA 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.