Flight number record

AA 238

American Airlines · Los Angeles to New York

Route: LAX → JFK
Departs: 10:20
Flights: 363
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 238, check with American Airlines.

AA 238 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 363 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so AA 238 runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 83 extra late arrivals.

On time

69.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 358 completed flights

Avg delay

92 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.83%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

12.6%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 363 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.6% 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 238 flies

AA 238 flies LAX to JFK without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 10:20, used on 130 of 363 flights, with 10:28 (42 flights) and 10:30 (41 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 10:20130 flights35.8%
Departs 10:2842 flights11.6%
Departs 10:3041 flights11.3%

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 10:20 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and AA 238 runs 15 points worse at 69.3%. 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 238 next to LAX to JFK

Every carrier on LAX to JFK combined arrived on time 79.1% of the time across 10,287 flights, so AA 238 is 10 points behind it. American flew 3,242 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 76.7% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.4%, which this flight trails by 5 points.

AA 238 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
AA 238thin sample	363	69.3%	92 min	0.83%	C+
All American Airlines on LAX–JFK	3,242	76.7%	112 min	2.19%	B
All carriers on LAX–JFK	10,287	79.1%	92 min	2.04%	B
American Airlines, whole network	986,297	74.4%	85 min	2.29%	C

Across the year

AA 238 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter AA 238 held fairly steady: 69.6% in Jul–Sep 2025, 71.9% in Oct–Dec 2025, 63.2% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 72.2% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights69.6%
Oct–Dec 202590 flights71.9%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights63.2%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights72.2%

Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, AA 238 did best on Friday at 76.9% on time and worst on Wednesday at 57.7%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why AA 238 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 10,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
44%
National Airspace System
35%
Carrier
21%
Security
0%
Extreme weather
0%

44% 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 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 44 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 10,154 delay minutes reported on AA 238.

Cancellations are rare at 0.83%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

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. 12.6% 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 2,475 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 363 flights under AA 238 in the data flew LAX 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. 363 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 238

For a booking, AA 238 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 12.6% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.

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