Carrier route record
B6RIC→BOS
JetBlue Airways · Richmond to Boston
- Flights
- 758
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 45%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with JetBlue Airways.
JetBlue on RIC to BOS sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 758 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate JetBlue on RIC to BOS from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 735 completed flights
Avg delay
84 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.90%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.4%
Every carrier on RIC to BOS, 1,696 flights
These figures cover 758 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.0% 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 RIC to BOS
JetBlue flew 758 of the 1,696 flights on RIC to BOS, about 45% of it. Its 75.2% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 80.9% to JetBlue at 75.2%.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 938 | 80.9% | 71 min | 2.88% | B |
| JetBlue Airways (this page) | 758 | 75.2% | 84 min | 2.90% | B |
Flight by flight
JetBlue flight numbers on RIC 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 38 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am219 flights92.1%
- 8am–11am115 flights87.5%
- 11am–2pm131 flights72.1%
- 2pm–5pm136 flights60.0%
- 5pm–8pm111 flights53.8%
- 8pm–5am46 flights68.2%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.8% on time, against 92.1% 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 219 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
JetBlue on RIC to BOS through the year
December is the weak month at 58.7% 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 90 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 86.3% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 66.0%. 20 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why JetBlue runs late on this route
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 15,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
- 9%Extreme weather
35% 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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 15,280 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 92.1% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.90%, 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.0% 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.0% on time across 757 flights, 3 points below 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 758 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 RIC to BOS
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.90% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 735 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.