Carrier route record
DLTPA→BOS
Delta Air Lines · Tampa to Boston
- Flights
- 1,168
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 41%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on TPA to BOS lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four 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 1,168 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on TPA 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
76.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,142 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.14%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.2%
Every carrier on TPA to BOS, 2,825 flights
These figures cover 1,168 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.7% 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
Delta against every carrier on TPA to BOS
Delta flew 1,168 of the 2,825 flights on TPA to BOS, about 41% of it. Its 76.7% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 76.7% to American at 37.5%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,168 | 76.7% | 79 min | 2.14% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,580 | 73.4% | 74 min | 2.85% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 68 | 53.7% | 92 min | 1.47% | F |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 9 | 37.5% | 87 min | 11.11% | F− |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on TPA to BOS
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 35 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–8am298 flights94.2%
- 8am–11am1 flights—
- 11am–2pm358 flights76.0%
- 2pm–5pm166 flights66.5%
- 5pm–8pm53 flights59.6%
- 8pm–5am292 flights68.2%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.6% on time, against 94.2% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 358 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on TPA to BOS through the year
July is the worst month at 62.6% on time, 24 points below May, the best at 86.7%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. April was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.1%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 21,000 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
52% 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 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 33 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 21,039 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 94.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.14% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.
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. 10.7% 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 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. 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 75.7% on time across 1,168 flights, within about 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 1,168 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.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on TPA to BOS
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 86.7% on time and July 62.6%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,142 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to BOS, every carrier
- Delta on BOS to TPA, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on TPA to BOS73.4%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.