Carrier route record

F9LAX→JFK

Frontier Airlines · Los Angeles to New York

Flights: 202
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 2%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.

Frontier on LAX to JFK sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 202 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, 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

75.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 200 completed flights

Avg delay

77 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.50%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.1%

Every carrier on LAX to JFK, 10,287 flights

These figures cover 202 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.0% 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

Frontier against every carrier on LAX to JFK

Frontier flew 202 of the 10,287 flights on LAX to JFK, about 2% of it. Its 75.5% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 81.6% to Frontier at 75.5%.

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 Airlines (this page)thin 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

When Frontier 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 202 flights.

The overnight block holds up unusually well at 75.5% on time across 202 flights. Red-eyes fly into empty airspace and empty gates, and they are the first rotation of the aircraft's day rather than the last. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 202 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on LAX to JFK through the year

Jul–Sep 202592 flights67.4%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights82.4%
Jan–Mar 202618 flights—

Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 75.5% on time across 202 flights.

Split by quarter, Frontier on LAX to JFK logged 92 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 92 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 18 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 75.5% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 3,763 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
45%
Carrier
30%
National Airspace System
25%

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 3,763 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 3,763 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.50%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

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. 10.0% 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 70.4% on time across 203 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 202 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 Frontier on LAX to JFK

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 202 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 75.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 200 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures