Carrier route record
AAJFK→LAX
American Airlines · New York to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 3,298
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 32%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on JFK to LAX lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 3,298 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 3,366 at 75.3% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate American on JFK to LAX from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,206 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.61%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
75.4%
Every carrier on JFK to LAX, 10,285 flights
These figures cover 3,298 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on JFK to LAX
American flew 3,298 of the 10,285 flights on JFK to LAX, about 32% of it. Its 78.6% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 78.6% to Frontier at 70.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page) | 3,298 | 78.6% | 96 min | 2.61% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 3,366 | 75.3% | 67 min | 2.55% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 3,480 | 72.5% | 73 min | 3.19% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 141 | 70.8% | 78 min | 2.13% | C |
JetBlue Airways cancels 3.2% 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
American flight numbers on JFK to LAX
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Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 18 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am702 flights87.8%
- 8am–11am405 flights80.4%
- 11am–2pm296 flights84.1%
- 2pm–5pm747 flights78.1%
- 5pm–8pm556 flights72.6%
- 8pm–5am592 flights70.0%
Scale runs 60% to 95%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.8% of the time, against 70.0% for the overnight window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 747 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on JFK to LAX through the year
January is the weak month at 69.0% on time, against 85.3% in March. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. August was the busiest month here, with 310 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 73.9%, a spread of 9 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on JFK to LAX runs when it is late
American on JFK to LAX often beats the schedule: 1,405 of 3,206 completed flights, 44%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 685 late arrivals split 205 under half an hour, 183 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 297 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early1,405 flights43.8%
- Within 15 min1,116 flights34.8%
- 15–29 min late205 flights6.4%
- 30–59 min late183 flights5.7%
- 1–2 hours late147 flights4.6%
- 2+ hours late150 flights4.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 3,206 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
165 of 619 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 27% of them. In the other direction, 231 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 American on JFK to LAX
The latest arrival of the period was on 20 May 2026, 17 hours 12 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 20 May 2026 | 17 hours 12 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 August 2026 | 16 hours 35 minutes | Carrier |
| 4 November 2025 | 15 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 May 2026 | 14 hours 9 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 24 February 2026 | 13 hours 48 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 66,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 66,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. The split is drawn from 65,541 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 87.8% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.61%, 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
9.3% 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.9% on time across 3,303 flights, 4 points below 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,298 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking American on JFK to LAX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. March runs 85.3% on time and January 69.0%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 3,206 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to LAX, every carrier
- American on LAX to JFK, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on JFK to LAX75.3%
- JetBlue Airways on JFK to LAX72.5%
- Frontier Airlines on JFK to LAX70.8%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) 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.