Carrier route record
ASLAX→EWR
Alaska Airlines · Los Angeles to Newark
- Flights
- 552
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on LAX to EWR earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 13 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 552 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 3,539 at 78.7% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's LAX to EWR record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 125 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 543 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.09%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.6%
Every carrier on LAX to EWR, 4,925 flights
These figures cover 552 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 21 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.
Carrier by carrier
Alaska against every carrier on LAX to EWR
Alaska flew 552 of the 4,925 flights on LAX to EWR, about 11% of it. Its 90.1% on time is 11 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 90.1% to Spirit at 75.4%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlines (this page) | 552 | 90.1% | 59 min | 1.09% | A |
| United Airlines | 3,539 | 78.7% | 79 min | 1.92% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 517 | 77.2% | 82 min | 2.71% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 317 | 75.4% | 56 min | 4.42% | B− |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 78.7%, 2 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 LAX to EWR
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 552 flights.
- 5am–8am264 flights90.3%
- 8am–11am99 flights85.6%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am189 flights92.0%
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is the strongest at 92.0% on time. The full set of windows spans 6 points.
Across the year
Alaska on LAX to EWR through the year
August is the worst month at 82.3% on time, 18 points below March, the best at 100.0%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 93.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 81.3%. 13 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 45% of the 3,210 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.
- 45%National Airspace System
- 41%Carrier
- 14%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, 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 1,331 of the 3,210 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,210 reported delay minutes.
45% 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 1,432 minutes out of 3,210, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.09% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.54%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.1% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
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 74.0% on time across 553 flights, 16 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 16 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 552 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 LAX to EWR
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 552 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 90.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 543 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to EWR, every carrier
- Alaska on EWR to LAX, the return leg
- United Airlines on LAX to EWR78.7%
- JetBlue Airways on LAX to EWR77.2%
- Spirit Airlines on LAX to EWR75.4%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Newark Liberty International (EWR) delay statistics
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
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.