Carrier route record

AALAX→SFO

American Airlines · Los Angeles to San Francisco

Flights: 343
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 3%
Carriers: 7

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

American on LAX to SFO draws a D+. Roughly 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 343 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 2,593 at 72.0% on time.

SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the six carriers covered here at 72.0% on time across 2,593 flights.

On time

61.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 341 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.29%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

64.8%

Every carrier on LAX to SFO, 11,013 flights

These figures cover 343 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.8% 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

American against every carrier on LAX to SFO

American flew 343 of the 11,013 flights on LAX to SFO, about 3% of it. Its 61.3% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 64.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 72.0% to Alaska at 52.3%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 72.0% of the time; Alaska Airlines manages 52.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 686 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	2,593	72.0%	59 min	1.16%	C
United Airlines	3,257	66.3%	57 min	0.25%	C+
Delta Air Lines	2,373	65.2%	55 min	1.52%	C
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	343	61.3%	74 min	0.29%	D+
Southwest Airlines	1,370	57.1%	61 min	0.36%	D+
Frontier Airlines	391	53.3%	72 min	2.05%	F
Alaska Airlines	686	52.3%	55 min	0.44%	F+

The spread between SkyWest and Alaska is 20 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 20 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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 12 points, against 20 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm12 flights—
2pm–5pm1 flights—
5pm–8pm298 flights61.5%
8pm–5am32 flights50.0%

Scale runs 40% to 65%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 50.0% on time, against 61.5% for the 5pm–8pm slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 298 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on LAX to SFO through the year

Jul–Sep 2025154 flights57.9%
Oct–Dec 202579 flights60.8%
Jan–Mar 202678 flights69.2%
Apr–Jun 202632 flights59.4%

Scale runs 50% to 75%. 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 61.3% on time across 343 flights.

American on LAX to SFO did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 69.2% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 57.9%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 86 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 54.4%. 21 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 56% of the 9,704 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
56%
National Airspace System
26%
Carrier
18%

56% 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 9,704 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 56 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 9,704 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.29%, 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. 15.8% 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 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 76.7% on time across 345 flights, 15 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 15 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 343 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. 343 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 61.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 341 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