Route reliability record

LGA→BOS

New York to Boston

Flights: 7,255
Period: July 2025 to June 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 7,255 flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 543 at 76.4% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

73.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 6,864 completed flights

Avg delay

69 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

5.32%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

Delta

76.4% on time across 543 flights

These figures cover 7,255 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.9% 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: 3 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.

On-time performance by carrier on LGA to BOS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	543	76.4%	90 min	3.87%	B−
Republic Airways	6,712	73.6%	68 min	5.44%	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 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am849 flights92.8%
8am–11am1,548 flights83.8%
11am–2pm1,334 flights80.4%
2pm–5pm1,391 flights62.2%
5pm–8pm1,292 flights60.8%
8pm–5am841 flights63.2%

Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.8% on time, against 92.8% 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 1,548 flights scheduled in it.

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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.August best, October worst

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. October was the busiest month here, with 674 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.6%. 17 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 124,000 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
38%
Late-arriving aircraft
34%
Carrier
26%
Extreme weather
3%
Security
0%

38% 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 124,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 124,330 reported delay minutes.

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 92.8% on time here.

Cancellations run at 5.32%, against 1.81% 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. 10.9% 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 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 77.7% on time across 7,251 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 7,255 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 5.32% 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. 6,864 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 arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 26.2% of the 7,255 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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 76.4% on time across 543 flights. Republic Airways is at the other end on 73.6%, a gap of 3 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 92.8% 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 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.

Where to go next

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, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures