Carrier route record

AALAX→SFO

American Airlines · Los Angeles to San Francisco

Flights: 302
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 3%
Carriers: 7

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.

American on LAX to SFO draws a D+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 302 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 2,515 at 66.6% on time.

SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the six carriers covered here at 66.6% on time across 2,515 flights.

On time

63.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 302 completed flights

Avg delay

76 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

60.1%

Every carrier on LAX to SFO, 11,437 flights

These figures cover 302 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Carrier by carrier

American against every carrier on LAX to SFO

American flew 302 of the 11,437 flights on LAX to SFO, about 3% of it. Its 63.9% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 60.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 66.6% to Frontier at 47.7%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 66.6% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 47.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 395 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on LAX to SFO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	2,515	66.6%	58 min	1.19%	C
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	302	63.9%	76 min	0.00%	D+
United Airlines	3,330	62.9%	56 min	0.12%	D+
Delta Air Lines	2,373	60.9%	53 min	1.56%	D
Alaska Airlines	1,049	50.9%	54 min	0.67%	F+
Southwest Airlines	1,473	50.7%	62 min	0.34%	F+
Frontier Airlines	395	47.7%	66 min	2.28%	F

The spread between SkyWest and Frontier is 19 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 19 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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Departure window

When American 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 302 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split American's LAX to SFO record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 63.9% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

American on LAX to SFO through the year

Jul–Sep 202546 flights65.2%
Oct–Dec 202579 flights60.8%
Jan–Mar 202678 flights69.2%
Apr–Jun 202632 flights59.4%
Jul–Sep 202667 flights62.7%

Scale runs 50% to 75%.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 63.9% on time across 302 flights.

Quarter by quarter American on LAX to SFO held fairly steady: 65.2% in Jul–Sep 2025, 60.8% in Oct–Dec 2025, 69.2% in Jan–Mar 2026, 59.4% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 62.7% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 10 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 64.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 54.9%, a spread of 10 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late American on LAX to SFO runs when it is late

The 109 late arrivals split 26 under half an hour, 37 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 46 an hour or more.

15+ min early73 flights24.2%
Within 15 min120 flights39.7%
15–29 min late26 flights8.6%
30–59 min late37 flights12.3%
1–2 hours late30 flights9.9%
2+ hours late16 flights5.3%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 302 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 93 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 8 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 24 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at SFO.

The worst days

Worst days for American on LAX to SFO

The latest arrival of the period was on 3 January 2026, 15 hours 29 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of American on LAX to SFO in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
3 January 2026	15 hours 29 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
25 December 2025	5 hours 49 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
21 May 2026	3 hours 41 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
2 February 2026	3 hours 34 minutes	Carrier
11 August 2026	3 hours 28 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 8,233 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
55%
National Airspace System
27%
Carrier
16%
Extreme weather
1%
Security
0%

55% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,233 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 52 to one. The split is drawn from 8,233 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

15.2% 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 337 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.2% on time across 303 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 302 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 American on LAX to SFO

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 302 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 63.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 302 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures