Carrier route record

B6PHL→BOS

JetBlue Airways · Philadelphia to Boston

Flights: 892
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 18%
Carriers: 4

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

JetBlue on PHL to BOS sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 892 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,761 at 80.9% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so JetBlue on PHL to BOS runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 48 extra late arrivals.

On time

72.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 869 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.58%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.2%

Every carrier on PHL to BOS, 4,956 flights

These figures cover 892 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.1% 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 PHL to BOS

JetBlue flew 892 of the 4,956 flights on PHL to BOS, about 18% of it. Its 72.8% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 87.5% to American at 71.4%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 80.9% of the time; American Airlines manages 71.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,246 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on PHL to BOS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	57	87.5%	43 min	1.75%	A
Republic Airways	1,761	80.9%	79 min	3.18%	B−
JetBlue Airways (this page)	892	72.8%	74 min	2.58%	C
American Airlines	2,246	71.4%	82 min	2.89%	C

Republic Airways cancels 3.2% 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

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 34 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am186 flights90.2%
8am–11am306 flights82.1%
11am–2pm20 flights—
2pm–5pm108 flights56.3%
5pm–8pm229 flights55.8%
8pm–5am43 flights64.3%

Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.8% on time, against 90.2% 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 306 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

JetBlue on PHL to BOS through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.April best, September worst

April is the best month on the calendar at 86.7% 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 114 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.0%. 16 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. National Airspace System accounts for 48% of the 17,000 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.

National Airspace System
48%
Late-arriving aircraft
38%
Carrier
13%
Extreme weather
1%

38% 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 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 38 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 17,487 reported delay minutes.

48% 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 8,422 minutes out of 17,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 2.58%, 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. 13.1% 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 280 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 runs 72.3% on time across 892 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. 892 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 PHL to BOS

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 892 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 72.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 869 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

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.

Key figures