Carrier route record
ASEWR→LAX
Alaska Airlines · Newark to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 491
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 10%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on EWR to LAX sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 491 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 3,527 at 71.0% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Alaska on EWR to LAX runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 52 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 477 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.65%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
70.7%
Every carrier on EWR to LAX, 4,750 flights
These figures cover 491 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Alaska against every carrier on EWR to LAX
Alaska flew 491 of the 4,750 flights on EWR to LAX, about 10% of it. Its 72.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 70.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 72.1% to Spirit at 62.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlines (this page) | 491 | 72.1% | 71 min | 2.65% | C |
| United Airlines | 3,527 | 71.0% | 84 min | 1.93% | C |
| JetBlue Airways | 480 | 70.5% | 79 min | 3.33% | C− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 252 | 62.6% | 82 min | 7.94% | D− |
JetBlue Airways cancels 3.3% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Alaska flight numbers on EWR to LAX
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Alaska runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 491 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am128 flights66.9%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm234 flights74.9%
- 8pm–5am129 flights72.4%
Scale runs 60% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 74.9% on time. The full set of windows spans 8 points.
Across the year
Alaska on EWR to LAX through the year
April is the best month on the calendar at 96.7% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. October was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.6%, a spread of 17 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Alaska on EWR to LAX runs when it is late
Alaska on EWR to LAX often beats the schedule: 205 of 477 completed flights, 43%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 133 late arrivals split 41 under half an hour, 41 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 51 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early205 flights43.0%
- Within 15 min139 flights29.1%
- 15–29 min late41 flights8.6%
- 30–59 min late41 flights8.6%
- 1–2 hours late29 flights6.1%
- 2+ hours late22 flights4.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 477 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
32 of 118 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 27% of them. In the other direction, 47 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 LAX.
The worst days
Worst days for Alaska on EWR to LAX
The latest arrival of the period was on 30 October 2025, 6 hours 19 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 30 October 2025 | 6 hours 19 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 August 2026 | 6 hours | Extreme weather |
| 23 October 2025 | 5 hours 30 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 July 2026 | 5 hours 13 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 August 2026 | 4 hours 37 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Alaska runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 9,411 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%National Airspace System
- 14%Carrier
- 10%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 9,411 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 9,411 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.65%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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 stage length
What a delay here costs
10.7% 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 2,454 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 91.6% on time across 490 flights, 20 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 20 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 491 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 Alaska on EWR to LAX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 491 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 72.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 477 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- EWR to LAX, every carrier
- Alaska on LAX to EWR, the return leg
- United Airlines on EWR to LAX71.0%
- JetBlue Airways on EWR to LAX70.5%
- Spirit Airlines on EWR to LAX62.6%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- Newark Liberty International (EWR) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.