Carrier route record
AALAX→BOS
American Airlines · Los Angeles to Boston
- Flights
- 1,146
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 24%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on LAX to BOS lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,146 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 716 at 87.0% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 87.0% on time across 716 flights.
Key figures
On time
76.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,131 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.31%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.4%
Every carrier on LAX to BOS, 4,718 flights
These figures cover 1,146 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% 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
American against every carrier on LAX to BOS
American flew 1,146 of the 4,718 flights on LAX to BOS, about 24% of it. Its 76.5% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 87.0% to JetBlue at 75.8%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 87.0% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 75.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,626 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 716 | 87.0% | 70 min | 1.12% | A |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,230 | 78.6% | 86 min | 1.71% | B |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,146 | 76.5% | 91 min | 1.31% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,626 | 75.8% | 73 min | 1.41% | B |
United leads JetBlue by 11 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on LAX to BOS
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 24 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am52 flights94.0%
- 8am–11am375 flights72.2%
- 11am–2pm198 flights69.9%
- 2pm–5pm167 flights78.4%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am354 flights81.2%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 69.9% on time against 94.0% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 375 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on LAX to BOS through the year
January is the weak month at 70.3% on time, against 86.0% in August. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 121 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.0% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 68.8%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 46% of the 24,000 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.
- 46%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
35% 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 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 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 24,080 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 11,000 of the 24,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.31% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
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. 9.5% 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 2,611 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 runs 74.0% on time across 1,143 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,146 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 LAX to BOS
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. August runs 86.0% on time and January 70.3%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,131 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to BOS, every carrier
- American on BOS to LAX, the return leg
- United Airlines on LAX to BOS87.0%
- Delta Air Lines on LAX to BOS78.6%
- JetBlue Airways on LAX to BOS75.8%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.