Carrier route record
AALAX→JFK
American Airlines · Los Angeles to New York
- Flights
- 3,242
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 32%
- 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 JFK 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 close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 3,242 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 3,358 at 81.6% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate American on LAX to JFK from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,149 completed flights
Avg delay
112 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.19%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.1%
Every carrier on LAX to JFK, 10,287 flights
These figures cover 3,242 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.6% 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 JFK
American flew 3,242 of the 10,287 flights on LAX to JFK, about 32% of it. Its 76.7% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 81.6% to Frontier at 75.5%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 (this page) | 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%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on LAX to JFK
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 20 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am757 flights86.0%
- 8am–11am672 flights71.9%
- 11am–2pm787 flights66.0%
- 2pm–5pm306 flights77.5%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am720 flights82.6%
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 66.0% on time against 86.0% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 787 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on LAX to JFK through the year
February is the weak month at 64.6% on time, against 86.4% in April. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 280 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.5% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 70.7%. 10 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 82,000 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
45% 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 82,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 45 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 82,381 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 28,000 of the 82,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.19% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.68%.
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. 10.6% 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 2,475 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.3% on time across 3,237 flights, 4 points above 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,242 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 JFK
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 86.4% on time and February 64.6%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of February before you think about anything else. 3,149 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to JFK, every carrier
- American on JFK to LAX, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on LAX to JFK81.6%
- JetBlue Airways on LAX to JFK79.3%
- Frontier Airlines on LAX to JFK75.5%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.