Flight number record
AA 15
American Airlines · New York to San Francisco
- Route
- JFK → SFO
- Departs
- 17:00
- Flights
- 350
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 15, check with American Airlines.
AA 15 sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 350 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
73.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 339 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.86%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
10.9%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 350 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When AA 15 flies
AA 15 flies JFK to SFO without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:00, used on 223 of 350 flights, with 16:30 (37 flights) next.
- Departs 17:00223 flights63.7%
- Departs 16:3037 flights10.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 17:00 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and AA 15 runs 6 points better at 73.7%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
AA 15 next to JFK to SFO
Every carrier on JFK to SFO combined arrived on time 71.4% of the time across 6,800 flights, so AA 15 is 2 points ahead of it. American flew 1,501 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 74.6% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.7%, close to this flight's figure.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA 15thin sample | 350 | 73.7% | 86 min | 2.86% | C |
| All American Airlines on JFK–SFO | 1,501 | 74.6% | 67 min | 2.86% | C |
| All carriers on JFK–SFO | 6,800 | 71.4% | 69 min | 2.57% | C |
| American Airlines, whole network | 988,892 | 74.7% | 85 min | 2.14% | C |
Across the year
AA 15 quarter by quarter
AA 15 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 83.3% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 66.7%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 70 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights83.3%
- Oct–Dec 202583 flights72.8%
- Jan–Mar 202684 flights82.5%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights66.7%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights69.0%
Scale runs 60% to 90%.
By weekday, AA 15 did best on Tuesday at 83.3% on time and worst on Thursday at 66.0%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 17 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late AA 15 runs when it is late
AA 15 often beats the schedule: 128 of 339 completed flights, 38%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 89 late arrivals split 23 under half an hour, 29 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 37 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early128 flights37.8%
- Within 15 min122 flights36.0%
- 15–29 min late23 flights6.8%
- 30–59 min late29 flights8.6%
- 1–2 hours late16 flights4.7%
- 2+ hours late21 flights6.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 339 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
12 of 69 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. In the other direction, 32 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at SFO.
The worst days
Worst days for AA 15
The latest arrival of the period was on 19 May 2026, 16 hours 48 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in August 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 19 May 2026 | 16 hours 48 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 August 2026 | 5 hours 24 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 November 2025 | 3 hours 47 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 August 2026 | 3 hours 34 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 August 2026 | 3 hours 29 minutes | Extreme weather |
Delay causes
Why AA 15 runs late
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 7,623 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%National Airspace System
- 18%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,623 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 7,623 delay minutes reported on AA 15.
Cancellations run at 2.86%, against 1.89% 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 routes
What a delay on this flight costs
10.9% 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.
At 2,586 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
Every one of the 350 flights under AA 15 in the data flew JFK to SFO. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 350 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 AA 15
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on AA 15: 2.86% of its 350 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs an hour and a half, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to SFO, every carrier and departure
- SFO to JFK, the return direction
- American Airlines 179 on the same route79.8%
- American Airlines 177 on the same route60.4%
- Delta Air Lines 668 on the same route71.8%
- Delta Air Lines 667 on the same route55.7%
- JetBlue Airways 115 on the same route80.9%
- Delta Air Lines 679 on the same route72.7%
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- American Airlines on-time record
- Every American Airlines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
A flight number here means American Airlines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.
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.