Route reliability record
LAX→JFK
Los Angeles to New York
- Flights
- 10,289
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 2,475 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 10,289 LAX to JFK flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 3,367 at 79.4% on time.
Best time to fly LAX to JFK: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 80.5%, against 77.5% for the route overall.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 79.4% on time across 3,367 flights.
Key figures
On time
77.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 9,911 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.90%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
79.4% on time across 3,367 flights
These figures cover 10,000 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on LAX to JFK
The three carriers here are closely matched: 5 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 140 | 81.2% | 56 min | 0.71% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 3,367 | 79.4% | 87 min | 2.61% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 3,479 | 77.9% | 70 min | 3.48% | B− |
| American Airlines | 3,303 | 74.9% | 112 min | 2.66% | C |
JetBlue Airways cancels 3.5% 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
Flights on LAX to JFK
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
- Delta 93406:0086.7% · 365 flights
- Delta 96021:4583.1% · 365 flights
- American 11806:0083.6% · 365 flights
- American 30708:0074.6% · 364 flights
- Delta 95809:0582.4% · 364 flights
- American 27413:0057.9% · 364 flights
- American 23810:2067.0% · 363 flights
- Delta 97907:0086.6% · 363 flights
- American 1021:3084.6% · 361 flights
- American 207:0085.5% · 359 flights
- American 415:2073.2% · 356 flights
- American 2815:1576.5% · 356 flights
- American 3211:4571.1% · 350 flights
- JetBlue 152420:3582.3% · 347 flights
- Delta 91523:5583.6% · 338 flights
- JetBlue 52413:3078.8% · 337 flights
- JetBlue 22406:0079.8% · 336 flights
- JetBlue 42412:4078.7% · 332 flights
- Delta 95111:4572.9% · 331 flights
- Delta 93911:5569.0% · 331 flights
- Delta 99113:1576.5% · 323 flights
- JetBlue 32423:4073.6% · 317 flights
- Delta 93815:1076.9% · 302 flights
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Los Angeles to New York
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LAX → EWRLos Angeles to Newark | Alaska Airlines | 90.1% | 91.6% | 1.63% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. SNA → EWRSanta Ana to Newark | United Airlines | 77.6% | 79.3% | 2.11% | 5am–8am, Sat | UA 2186 21:14 |
| 3. LAX → JFKLos Angeles to New York | Delta Air Lines | 77.3% | 79.4% | 2.61% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 934 06:00 |
| 4. LAX → EWRLos Angeles to Newark | United Airlines | 76.3% | 77.7% | 1.76% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 2743 07:00 |
| 5. LAX → EWRLos Angeles to Newark | JetBlue Airways | 75.6% | 78.4% | 3.54% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 17 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1,941 flights86.3%
- 8am–11am2,032 flights76.4%
- 11am–2pm2,174 flights69.2%
- 2pm–5pm1,419 flights75.2%
- 5pm–8pm2 flights—
- 8pm–5am2,721 flights79.8%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. 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 69.2% on time against 86.3% 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. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 2,721 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LAX to JFK by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On LAX to JFK, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 86.3% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 69.2%, a wide gap of 17.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am86.3%
- 8–11am76.4%
- 11am–2pm69.2%
- 2–5pm75.2%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am79.8%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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.
August is the worst month at 66.5% on time, 20 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. July was the busiest month here, with 919 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.2%, a spread of 7 points.
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 201,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 201,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 36 to one. The split is drawn from 200,814 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 79,000 of the 201,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.90%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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 actually costs
9.2% 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 runs 75.4% on time across 10,285 flights, within 2 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 10,289 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in JFK after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.90% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 9,911 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAX to JFK questions
How often is LAX to JFK delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.5% of the 10,289 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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 79.4% on time across 3,367 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 74.9%, a gap of 5 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 86.3% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 69.2%, 17 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 August delays on LAX to JFK?
August is the weakest month at 66.5% on time, compared with 86.1% in April. Across the year that is 20 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
- Frontier Airlines on LAX to JFK81.2%
- Delta Air Lines on LAX to JFK79.4%
- JetBlue Airways on LAX to JFK77.9%
- American Airlines on LAX to JFK74.9%
- LAX to SFO, a related route60.1%
- SFO to JFK, a related route78.0%
- LAX to LAS, a related route75.8%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record81.2%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record79.4%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record77.9%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.
Embed LAX to JFK’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.