Carrier route record

ASSFO→EWR

Alaska Airlines · San Francisco to Newark

Flights: 611
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 14%
Carriers: 2

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

Alaska on SFO to EWR earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 611 flights, with a median arrival 18 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's SFO to EWR record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 84 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 601 completed flights

Avg delay

60 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.82%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

76.4%

Every carrier on SFO to EWR, 4,401 flights

These figures cover 611 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 18 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 SFO to EWR

Alaska flew 611 of the 4,401 flights on SFO to EWR, about 14% of it. Its 86.0% on time is 10 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 86.0% to United at 74.8%.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on SFO to EWR
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Alaska Airlines (this page)	611	86.0%	60 min	0.82%	A+
United Airlines	3,790	74.8%	82 min	2.24%	C

Flight by flight

Alaska flight numbers on SFO to EWR

AS 29207:0086.6% · 269 flights

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

5am–8am188 flights96.8%
8am–11am151 flights77.9%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am272 flights83.0%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.8% of the time, against 77.9% for the morning window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 272 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Alaska on SFO to EWR through the year

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

July is the worst month at 67.8% on time, 30 points below September, the best at 98.2%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 69 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.5%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 5,011 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
38%
National Airspace System
33%
Carrier
28%
Extreme weather
0%

38% 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 5,011 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 38 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 5,011 reported delay minutes.

33% 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 1,677 minutes out of 5,011, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, 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

5.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 2,565 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 75.5% on time across 610 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 611 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 SFO to EWR

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 611 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 86.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 601 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