Flight number record

AA 255

American Airlines · New York to Los Angeles

Route: JFK → LAX
Departs: 09:30
Flights: 362
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 255, check with American Airlines.

AA 255 lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 362 flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, AA 255's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 49 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 354 completed flights

Avg delay

112 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.21%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

5.6%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 362 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 15 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Schedule

When AA 255 flies

AA 255 flies JFK to LAX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 09:30, used on 144 of 362 flights, with 09:00 (80 flights) and 08:05 (37 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 09:30144 flights39.8%
Departs 09:0080 flights22.1%
Departs 08:0537 flights10.2%

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 09:30 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and AA 255 runs level with that at 82.5%. 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 255 next to JFK to LAX

Every carrier on JFK to LAX combined arrived on time 77.6% of the time across 10,284 flights, so AA 255 is 5 points ahead of it. American flew 3,237 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 80.3% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.4%, which this flight beats by 8 points.

AA 255 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
AA 255thin sample	362	82.5%	112 min	2.21%	B
All American Airlines on JFK–LAX	3,237	80.3%	95 min	2.04%	B
All carriers on JFK–LAX	10,284	77.6%	77 min	1.94%	B
American Airlines, whole network	986,297	74.4%	85 min	2.29%	C

Across the year

AA 255 quarter by quarter

AA 255 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 95.7% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 73.8%, a swing of 22 points on roughly 91 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 flights95.7%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights83.7%
Jan–Mar 202688 flights73.8%
Apr–Jun 202690 flights75.6%

Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, AA 255 did best on Friday at 88.0% on time and worst on Saturday at 73.1%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why AA 255 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 6,947 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
58%
Carrier
28%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
2%

58% 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 6,947 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 30 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 6,947 delay minutes reported on AA 255.

Cancellations sit at 2.21% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

5.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.

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 362 flights under AA 255 in the data flew JFK to LAX. 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. 362 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 255

For a booking, read AA 255 as 82.5% on time with 2.21% cancelled over 362 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.

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