Route reliability record

LAX→JFK

Los Angeles to New York

Flights: 10,287
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 2,475 mi
Carriers: 4

This route lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. 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 10,287 flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 3,358 at 81.6% on time.

Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 81.6% on time across 3,358 flights.

On time

79.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 10,023 completed flights

Avg delay

92 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.04%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

Delta

81.6% on time across 3,358 flights

These figures cover 10,000 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% 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

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.

On-time performance by carrier on LAX to JFK
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	3,358	81.6%	93 min	1.79%	B
JetBlue Airways	3,485	79.3%	71 min	2.24%	B
American Airlines	3,242	76.7%	112 min	2.19%	B
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	202	75.5%	77 min	0.50%	B+

No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 81.6%, 5 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 17 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am1,947 flights87.8%
8am–11am2,018 flights77.0%
11am–2pm2,114 flights70.8%
2pm–5pm1,415 flights76.9%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am2,793 flights82.1%

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 70.8% on time against 87.8% 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 2,793 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 15 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.

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

July is the worst month at 71.3% on time, 15 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 922 flights.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 82.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.8%. 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 191,000 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
40%
Late-arriving aircraft
35%
National Airspace System
24%
Extreme weather
1%
Security
0%

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 191,000 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 split is drawn from 191,467 reported delay minutes.

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 77,000 of the 191,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 2.04% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.52%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here actually costs

8.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route are the an hour and a half kind, which a normal layover absorbs.

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 77.6% on time across 10,284 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 10,287 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 July 71.3%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 10,023 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

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 20.9% of the 10,287 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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 81.6% on time across 3,358 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 76.7%, 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 87.8% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 70.8%, 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 July delays on LAX to JFK?

July is the weakest month at 71.3% on time, compared with 86.1% in April. Across the year that is 15 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

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, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures