Carrier route record

ASJFK→SFO

Alaska Airlines · New York to San Francisco

Flights: 1,108
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 16%
Carriers: 4

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

Alaska on JFK to SFO sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,108 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 1,448 at 77.2% on time.

American Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 77.2% on time across 1,448 flights.

On time

71.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,085 completed flights

Avg delay

70 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.81%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.1%

Every carrier on JFK to SFO, 6,730 flights

These figures cover 1,108 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.8% 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.

Carrier by carrier

Alaska against every carrier on JFK to SFO

Alaska flew 1,108 of the 6,730 flights on JFK to SFO, about 16% of it. Its 71.4% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 77.2% to Delta at 71.3%.

The three carriers here are closely matched: 6 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.

On-time performance by carrier on JFK to SFO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlines	1,448	77.2%	66 min	2.56%	B
JetBlue Airways	1,945	76.7%	75 min	2.01%	B
Alaska Airlines (this page)	1,108	71.4%	70 min	1.81%	C
Delta Air Lines	2,229	71.3%	70 min	1.48%	C

No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 77.2%, 6 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Flight by flight

Alaska flight numbers on JFK to SFO

Departure window

When Alaska runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 33 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am200 flights75.8%
11am–2pm365 flights84.9%
2pm–5pm180 flights65.3%
5pm–8pm122 flights70.8%
8pm–5am241 flights52.3%

Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 52.3% on time, against 84.9% for the 11am–2pm slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Alaska on JFK to SFO through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.February best, July worst

July is the worst month at 55.4% on time, 32 points below February, the best at 87.2%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. December was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 77.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 66.3%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 42% of the 22,000 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.

National Airspace System
42%
Late-arriving aircraft
36%
Carrier
18%
Extreme weather
3%
Security
1%

36% 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 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 21,786 reported delay minutes.

42% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 9,198 minutes out of 22,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations sit at 1.81% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.8% 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 2,586 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 76.8% on time across 1,107 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 1,108 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 Alaska on JFK to SFO

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 87.2% on time and July 55.4%, a swing of 32 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,085 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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