Carrier route record
ASSAN→JFK
Alaska Airlines · San Diego to New York
- Flights
- 647
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 27%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on SAN to JFK lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 647 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,046 at 82.8% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's SAN to JFK record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 61 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 616 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.70%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
82.6%
Every carrier on SAN to JFK, 2,417 flights
These figures cover 647 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
Alaska against every carrier on SAN to JFK
Alaska flew 647 of the 2,417 flights on SAN to JFK, about 27% of it. Its 83.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 83.4% to JetBlue at 81.7%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlines (this page) | 647 | 83.4% | 57 min | 1.70% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,046 | 82.8% | 111 min | 3.35% | B− |
| JetBlue Airways | 724 | 81.7% | 107 min | 4.56% | B− |
JetBlue Airways cancels 4.6% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Alaska flight numbers on SAN to JFK
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Departure window
When Alaska runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 32 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am287 flights90.5%
- 8am–11am78 flights81.1%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm80 flights58.7%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am202 flights84.0%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.5% of the time, against 58.7% for the afternoon window. That is 32 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 287 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Alaska on SAN to JFK through the year
August is the worst month at 68.4% on time, 25 points below October, the best at 93.4%. 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 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.2%, a spread of 15 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Alaska on SAN to JFK runs when it is late
Alaska on SAN to JFK often beats the schedule: 263 of 616 completed flights, 43%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 102 late arrivals split 46 under half an hour, 29 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 27 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early263 flights42.7%
- Within 15 min251 flights40.7%
- 15–29 min late46 flights7.5%
- 30–59 min late29 flights4.7%
- 1–2 hours late18 flights2.9%
- 2+ hours late9 flights1.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 616 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 103 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 42 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 41 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 JFK.
The worst days
Worst days for Alaska on SAN to JFK
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 December 2025, 5 hours 54 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 14 December 2025 | 5 hours 54 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 24 February 2026 | 5 hours 27 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 30 November 2025 | 4 hours 17 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 August 2026 | 4 hours 9 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 7 August 2026 | 3 hours 41 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why Alaska runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 58% of the 5,778 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%National Airspace System
- 17%Extreme weather
- 13%Carrier
- 13%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 17% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 5,778 reported delay minutes.
58% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 3,347 minutes out of 5,778, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.70% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 3.09%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 2,446 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 76.4% on time across 647 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 647 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 Alaska on SAN to JFK
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 647 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 83.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 616 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SAN to JFK, every carrier
- Alaska on JFK to SAN, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on SAN to JFK82.8%
- JetBlue Airways on SAN to JFK81.7%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.