Route reliability record
RIC→BOS
Richmond to Boston
- Flights
- 1,696
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 473 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,696 RIC to BOS flights, of which Republic Airways flew 938 at 80.9% on time.
Best time to fly RIC to BOS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.9% of the time and Saturday flights 86.5%, against 78.4% for the route overall.
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.
Key figures
On time
78.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,646 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.89%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
80.9% on time across 938 flights
These figures cover 1,696 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.4% 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 RIC to BOS
The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 938 | 80.9% | 71 min | 2.88% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 758 | 75.2% | 84 min | 2.90% | B |
No carrier stands out. Republic tops the table at 80.9%, 6 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on RIC 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Richmond to Boston
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. RIC → BOSRichmond to Boston | Republic Airways | 78.6% | 80.9% | 2.88% | 11am–2pm, Sat | YX 5697 06:10 |
| 2. RIC → BOSRichmond to Boston | JetBlue Airways | 73.0% | 75.2% | 2.90% | 5am–8am, Sat | B6 1282 14:32 |
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 30 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am514 flights89.9%
- 8am–11am122 flights88.2%
- 11am–2pm454 flights84.3%
- 2pm–5pm161 flights63.0%
- 5pm–8pm399 flights60.2%
- 8pm–5am46 flights68.2%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.2% on time, against 89.9% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 514 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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.
December is the weak month at 66.2% on time, against 89.8% in April. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. October was the busiest month here, with 177 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 86.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.9%. 14 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 28,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%National Airspace System
- 30%Carrier
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 9,954 minutes out of 28,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 27,596 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.89%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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. 9.4% 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 473 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 76.4% on time across 1,694 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,696 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 2.89% 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. 1,646 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RIC to BOS questions
How often is RIC to BOS delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.6% of the 1,696 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 RIC to BOS?
Republic Airways leads at 80.9% on time across 938 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 75.2%, a gap of 6 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 RIC to BOS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 60.2%, 30 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 December delays on RIC to BOS?
December is the weakest month at 66.2% on time, compared with 89.8% in April. Across the year that is 24 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 RIC — the return legseparate record
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on RIC to BOS80.9%
- JetBlue Airways on RIC to BOS75.2%
- RIC to ATL, a related route88.7%
- DCA to BOS, a related route71.4%
- RIC to CLT, a related route83.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record80.9%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record75.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. RIC to BOS and BOS to RIC 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.