Route reliability record
TPA→BOS
Tampa to Boston
- Flights
- 2,784
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,185 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,784 TPA to BOS flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 1,169 at 77.1% on time.
Best time to fly TPA to BOS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 80.9%, against 74.3% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
74.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,691 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.20%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
77.1% on time across 1,169 flights
These figures cover 2,784 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on TPA to BOS
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 14 | 92.9% | 17 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,169 | 77.1% | 76 min | 2.40% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,592 | 72.2% | 76 min | 3.77% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 9 | 37.5% | 87 min | 11.11% | F− |
JetBlue Airways cancels 3.8% 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
Flights on TPA 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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Tampa 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. TPA → BOSTampa to Boston | Delta Air Lines | 75.2% | 77.1% | 2.40% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 1439 19:59 |
| 2. TPA → BOSTampa to Boston | JetBlue Airways | 69.5% | 72.2% | 3.77% | 5am–8am, Wed | B6 1192 07:30 |
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 37 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am701 flights93.6%
- 8am–11am276 flights81.5%
- 11am–2pm627 flights72.8%
- 2pm–5pm394 flights60.9%
- 5pm–8pm275 flights56.7%
- 8pm–5am511 flights64.8%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.7% on time, against 93.6% 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 701 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter TPA to BOS by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On TPA to BOS, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.6% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 56.7%, a wide gap of 36.9 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.6%
- 8–11am81.5%
- 11am–2pm72.8%
- 2–5pm60.9%
- 5–8pm56.7%
- 8pm–5am64.8%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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 67.1% on time, against 83.9% in May. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 304 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.3%, a spread of 14 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 53,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 53,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 to one. The split is drawn from 52,758 reported delay minutes.
32% 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 17,000 minutes out of 53,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.20%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
11.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,185 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.
The return leg runs 74.4% on time across 2,780 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.
The sample behind these figures is 2,784 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 3.20% 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. 2,691 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TPA to BOS questions
How often is TPA to BOS delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 25.7% of the 2,784 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on TPA to BOS?
Delta Air Lines leads at 77.1% on time across 1,169 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 72.2%, a gap of 5 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 TPA to BOS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 56.7%, 37 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 TPA to BOS?
December is the weakest month at 67.1% on time, compared with 83.9% in May. Across the year that is 17 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 TPA — the return legseparate record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on TPA to BOS77.1%
- JetBlue Airways on TPA to BOS72.2%
- TPA to ATL, a related route79.6%
- DCA to BOS, a related route70.1%
- TPA to ORD, a related route72.9%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record92.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record77.1%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record72.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. TPA to BOS and BOS to TPA 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.