Route reliability record
LAX→JFK
Los Angeles to New York
- Flights
- 10,337
- Period
- June 2025 to May 2026
- Distance
- 2,475 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.4%. About one flight in five arrive 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 10,337 flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 3,356 at 80.9% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 80.9% on time across 3,356 flights.
Key figures
On time
78.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 10,082 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.97%
National rate is 1.80%
Best carrier
Delta
80.9% on time across 3,356 flights
These figures cover 10,000 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% 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
Which airline is most reliable on LAX to JFK
The three carriers here are closely matched: 4 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 3,356 | 80.9% | 92 min | 1.79% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 3,507 | 78.2% | 73 min | 2.20% | B |
| American Airlines | 3,242 | 76.8% | 113 min | 2.04% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 232 | 74.7% | 74 min | 0.43% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 80.9%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 18 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1,954 flights87.3%
- 8am–11am2,022 flights76.7%
- 11am–2pm2,095 flights69.6%
- 2pm–5pm1,440 flights76.0%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am2,826 flights81.8%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. 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 69.6% on time against 87.3% 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.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
June is the worst month at 69.5% on time, 17 points below April, the best at 86.1%. 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.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 82.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.3%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 199,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 199,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 35 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 largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 79,000 of the 199,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.97% against a national 1.80%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.49%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.2% 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 2,475 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 runs 78.1% on time across 10,337 flights, within half a point 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 10,337 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 this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 86.1% on time and June 69.5%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else.
Common questions
LAX to JFK questions
How often is LAX to JFK delayed?
About one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.4% of the 10,337 flights in this analysis, against 22.6% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LAX to JFK?
Delta Air Lines leads at 80.9% on time across 3,356 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 76.8%, a gap of 4 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LAX to JFK?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.3% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 69.6%, 18 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are June delays on LAX to JFK?
June is the weakest month at 69.5% on time, compared with 86.1% in April. Across the year that is 17 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to LAX — the return legseparate record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record80.9%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record78.2%
- American Airlines on-time record76.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. LAX to JFK and JFK to LAX are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, June 2025 to May 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.