Flight number record
AA 238
American Airlines · Los Angeles to New York
- Route
- LAX → JFK
- Departs
- 10:20
- Flights
- 363
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 238, check with American Airlines.
AA 238 draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 363 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so AA 238 runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 103 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 352 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.38%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
12.2%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 363 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 76 of 363 flights, with 10:28 (42 flights) and 10:30 (41 flights) next.
- Departs 10:2076 flights20.9%
- Departs 10:2842 flights11.6%
- Departs 10:3041 flights11.3%
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 10:20 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and AA 238 runs 17 points worse at 67.0%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
AA 238 next to LAX to JFK
Every carrier on LAX to JFK combined arrived on time 77.5% of the time across 10,289 flights, so AA 238 is 11 points behind it. American flew 3,303 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 74.9% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.7%, which this flight trails by 8 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA 238thin sample | 363 | 67.0% | 87 min | 1.38% | C |
| All American Airlines on LAX–JFK | 3,303 | 74.9% | 112 min | 2.66% | C |
| All carriers on LAX–JFK | 10,289 | 77.5% | 90 min | 2.90% | B |
| American Airlines, whole network | 988,892 | 74.7% | 85 min | 2.14% | C |
Across the year
AA 238 quarter by quarter
AA 238 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 73.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 53.6%, a swing of 20 points on roughly 73 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 flights73.3%
- Oct–Dec 202590 flights71.9%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights63.2%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights72.2%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights53.6%
Scale runs 45% to 80%.
By weekday, AA 238 did best on Monday at 75.0% on time and worst on Sunday at 59.6%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late AA 238 runs when it is late
AA 238 often beats the schedule: 117 of 352 completed flights, 33%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 116 late arrivals split 40 under half an hour, 33 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 43 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early117 flights33.2%
- Within 15 min119 flights33.8%
- 15–29 min late40 flights11.4%
- 30–59 min late33 flights9.4%
- 1–2 hours late21 flights6.0%
- 2+ hours late22 flights6.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 352 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
20 of 101 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 20% of them. In the other direction, 35 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 JFK.
The worst days
Worst days for AA 238
The latest arrival of the period was on 4 September 2025, 9 hours 53 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 4 September 2025 | 9 hours 53 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 1 February 2026 | 9 hours 44 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 January 2026 | 8 hours 24 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 December 2025 | 6 hours 3 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 December 2025 | 5 hours 39 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why AA 238 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 10,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 0%Security
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 41 to one. The split is drawn from 10,041 delay minutes reported on AA 238.
Cancellations sit at 1.38% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.65%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
12.2% 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 2,475 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. 12.2% 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.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to JFK, every carrier and departure
- JFK to LAX, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 934 on the same route86.7%
- Delta Air Lines 960 on the same route83.1%
- American Airlines 118 on the same route83.6%
- American Airlines 307 on the same route74.6%
- Delta Air Lines 958 on the same route82.4%
- American Airlines 274 on the same route57.9%
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) 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.