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DelayAtlas

Carrier route record

B6ORDBOS

JetBlue Airways · Chicago to Boston

Flights
534
Period
July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route
7%
Carriers
6
CGRADE

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with JetBlue Airways.

JetBlue on ORD to BOS sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 534 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 444 at 82.8% on time.

Envoy Air is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 82.8% on time across 444 flights.

Key figures

On time

73.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 517 completed flights

Avg delay

83 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.62%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

67.6%

Every carrier on ORD to BOS, 7,642 flights

These figures cover 534 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.2% 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 ORD to BOS

JetBlue flew 534 of the 7,642 flights on ORD to BOS, about 7% of it. Its 73.5% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 67.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 82.8% to American at 59.9%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 82.8% of the time; American Airlines manages 59.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,126 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to BOS
AirlineFlightsOn timeAvg delayCancelledGrade
Envoy Air44482.8%69 min2.48%B
JetBlue Airways (this page)53473.5%83 min2.62%C
Republic Airways89670.3%73 min5.47%C−
Delta Air Lines96269.1%88 min3.01%C−
United Airlines2,68068.6%78 min1.87%C
American Airlines2,12659.9%75 min2.82%D

Republic Airways cancels 5.5% 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 ORD 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 22 points, against 23 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

  • 5am–8am61 flights81.4%
  • 8am–11am212 flights80.7%
  • 11am–2pm81 flights59.3%
  • 2pm–5pm33 flights68.8%
  • 5pm–8pm80 flights68.9%
  • 8pm–5am67 flights68.8%

Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 59.3% on time against 81.4% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 212 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

JetBlue on ORD to BOS through the year

On-time rate by calendar month70JF63M90A90M75J65J88A71S68O65N69D
Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.May best, March worst

May is the best month on the calendar at 90.0% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. October was the busiest month here, with 58 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.0%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

On-time rate by day of the week69.0Mon80.0Tue83.9Wed69.0Thu72.4Fri77.4Sat69.0Sun
Monday: 69.0 percent on time. Tuesday: 80.0 percent on time. Wednesday: 83.9 percent on time. Thursday: 69.0 percent on time. Friday: 72.4 percent on time. Saturday: 77.4 percent on time. Sunday: 69.0 percent on time

Delay causes

Why JetBlue runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 11,000 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.

  • Late-arriving aircraft
    47%
  • National Airspace System
    27%
  • Carrier
    25%
  • Extreme weather
    0%

47% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 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 11,357 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 81.4% on time here.

Cancellations run at 2.62%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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. 12.2% 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.

The 867 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The return leg runs 73.6% on time across 533 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 534 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking JetBlue on ORD to BOS

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 534 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 73.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 517 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Related

Where to go next

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.