Carrier route record

ASSAN→JFK

Alaska Airlines · San Diego to New York

Flights: 650
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 27%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 650 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, JetBlue Airways, flew 727 at 84.3% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's SAN to JFK record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 61 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 625 completed flights

Avg delay

52 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.38%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.8%

Every carrier on SAN to JFK, 2,413 flights

These figures cover 650 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

Alaska against every carrier on SAN to JFK

Alaska flew 650 of the 2,413 flights on SAN to JFK, about 27% of it. Its 83.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 84.3% to Delta at 83.5%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on SAN to JFK
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
JetBlue Airways	727	84.3%	119 min	3.30%	B−
Alaska Airlines (this page)	650	83.7%	52 min	1.38%	B
Delta Air Lines	1,036	83.5%	105 min	2.99%	B

JetBlue Airways cancels 3.3% 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

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 11 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am287 flights89.9%
8am–11am78 flights81.1%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm21 flights—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am264 flights79.4%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.9% of the time, against 79.4% for the overnight window. That is 11 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

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.October best, July worst

July is the worst month at 74.1% on time, 19 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, Monday is the strongest day at 88.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.7%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 50% of the 5,326 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.

National Airspace System
50%
Late-arriving aircraft
18%
Extreme weather
16%
Carrier
16%

Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 5,326 reported delay minutes.

50% 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 2,648 minutes out of 5,326, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations sit at 1.38% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 2.46%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 75.7% on time across 650 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 650 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. 650 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 83.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 625 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