Flight number record

AA 16

American Airlines · San Francisco to New York

Route: SFO → JFK
Departs: 10:22
Flights: 336
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 16, check with American Airlines.

AA 16 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 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 336 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

On time

74.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 323 completed flights

Avg delay

86 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.08%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

11.1%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 336 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.1% 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.

Schedule

When AA 16 flies

AA 16 flies SFO to JFK without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 10:22, used on 60 of 336 flights, with 10:14 (56 flights) and 10:35 (37 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 10:2260 flights17.9%
Departs 10:1456 flights16.7%
Departs 10:3537 flights11.0%

Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.

A 10:22 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and AA 16 runs 10 points worse at 74.6%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

AA 16 next to SFO to JFK

Every carrier on SFO to JFK combined arrived on time 80.1% of the time across 6,729 flights, so AA 16 is 6 points behind it. American flew 1,448 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 80.9% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.4%, close to this flight's figure.

AA 16 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
AA 16thin sample	336	74.6%	86 min	2.08%	C
All American Airlines on SFO–JFK	1,448	80.9%	119 min	2.90%	B
All carriers on SFO–JFK	6,729	80.1%	78 min	1.98%	B
American Airlines, whole network	986,297	74.4%	85 min	2.29%	C

Across the year

AA 16 quarter by quarter

AA 16 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 83.0% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 58.8%, a swing of 24 points on roughly 84 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 202592 flights83.0%
Oct–Dec 202583 flights79.3%
Jan–Mar 202678 flights76.7%
Apr–Jun 202683 flights58.8%

Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, AA 16 did best on Saturday at 88.2% on time and worst on Wednesday at 63.3%. Each day rests on about 48 flights, so a gap of 25 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why AA 16 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 7,036 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
42%
Carrier
29%
Late-arriving aircraft
25%
Extreme weather
5%

42% 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 2,945 minutes out of 7,036, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 7,036 delay minutes reported on AA 16.

Cancellations sit at 2.08% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.79%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.1% 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 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 336 flights under AA 16 in the data flew SFO to JFK. 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. 336 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 16

For a booking, AA 16 is one of the weaker ways to fly SFO to JFK: 6 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.

Where to go next

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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures