Route reliability record
LGA→BOS
New York to Boston
- Flights
- 7,148
- Period
- June 2025 to May 2026
- Distance
- 184 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% 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 7,148 flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 562 at 77.7% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.4%, so this route runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 41 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 6,765 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.27%
National rate is 1.80%
Best carrier
Delta
77.7% on time across 562 flights
These figures cover 7,148 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.4% 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 LGA to BOS
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points 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 | 562 | 77.7% | 94 min | 3.91% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 6,586 | 73.0% | 69 min | 5.39% | C− |
Republic Airways cancels 5.4% 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.
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 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am834 flights92.6%
- 8am–11am1,540 flights83.5%
- 11am–2pm1,335 flights79.2%
- 2pm–5pm1,386 flights61.6%
- 5pm–8pm1,283 flights60.2%
- 8pm–5am770 flights63.5%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.2% on time, against 92.6% 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.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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%. August is the strongest month at 83.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 21 points.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.4%. 16 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 128,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%National Airspace System
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
37% 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 47,000 minutes out of 128,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
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 92.6% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.27%, against 1.80% 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.2% 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 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 77.1% on time across 7,147 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 7,148 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 this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.27% 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.
Common questions
LGA to BOS questions
How often is LGA to BOS delayed?
About one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 26.7% of the 7,148 flights in this analysis, against 22.6% 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 77.7% on time across 562 flights. Republic Airways is at the other end on 73.0%, a gap of 5 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 LGA to BOS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 60.2%, 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 83.0% in August. Across the year that is 21 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-time record77.7%
- Republic Airways on-time record73.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, June 2025 to May 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.