Route reliability record
SFO→JFK
San Francisco to New York
- Flights
- 6,798
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 2,586 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 6,798 SFO to JFK flights, of which JetBlue Airways flew 1,955 at 78.9% on time.
Best time to fly SFO to JFK: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 82.3%, against 78.0% for the route overall.
JetBlue Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 78.9% on time across 1,955 flights.
Key figures
On time
78.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 6,571 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.49%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
JetBlue
78.9% on time across 1,955 flights
These figures cover 6,798 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SFO to JFK
The four carriers here are closely matched: 2 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways | 1,955 | 78.9% | 77 min | 2.51% | B |
| Alaska Airlines | 1,112 | 78.6% | 56 min | 2.16% | B |
| American Airlines | 1,501 | 77.5% | 113 min | 3.20% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines | 2,230 | 77.2% | 71 min | 2.15% | B |
American Airlines cancels 3.2% 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
Flights on SFO to JFK
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly San Francisco to New York
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SFO → EWRSan Francisco to Newark | Alaska Airlines | 88.5% | 89.4% | 1.03% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 2. SFO → JFKSan Francisco to New York | JetBlue Airways | 76.9% | 78.9% | 2.51% | 5am–8am, Wed | B6 816 07:00 |
| 3. SFO → JFKSan Francisco to New York | Alaska Airlines | 76.9% | 78.6% | 2.16% | 5am–8am, Tue | AS 20 07:20 |
| 4. SFO → JFKSan Francisco to New York | Delta Air Lines | 75.5% | 77.2% | 2.15% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 405 07:00 |
| 5. SFO → JFKSan Francisco to New York | American Airlines | 75.0% | 77.5% | 3.20% | 5am–8am, Fri | AA 234 06:15 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 21 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1,394 flights89.3%
- 8am–11am1,199 flights81.3%
- 11am–2pm1,507 flights68.0%
- 2pm–5pm930 flights71.0%
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am1,767 flights79.0%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 68.0% on time against 89.3% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 1,767 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SFO to JFK by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On SFO to JFK, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 89.3% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 68.0%, a wide gap of 21.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am89.3%
- 8–11am81.3%
- 11am–2pm68.0%
- 2–5pm71.0%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am79.0%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
August is the worst month at 63.9% on time, 23 points below September, the best at 86.4%. 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 622 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.4%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 115,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 26%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 115,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. The split is drawn from 114,903 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 40,000 of the 115,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.49% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.85%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 2,586 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 71.4% on time across 6,800 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.
The sample behind these figures is 6,798 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in JFK after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 86.4% on time and August 63.9%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 6,571 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to JFK questions
How often is SFO to JFK delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.0% of the 6,798 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SFO to JFK?
JetBlue Airways leads at 78.9% on time across 1,955 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 77.2%, a gap of 2 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SFO to JFK?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.3% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 68.0%, 21 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are August delays on SFO to JFK?
August is the weakest month at 63.9% on time, compared with 86.4% in September. Across the year that is 23 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to SFO — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- JetBlue Airways on SFO to JFK78.9%
- Alaska Airlines on SFO to JFK78.6%
- American Airlines on SFO to JFK77.5%
- Delta Air Lines on SFO to JFK77.2%
- SFO to LAX, a related route70.9%
- LAX to JFK, a related route77.5%
- SFO to SEA, a related route72.3%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record78.9%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record78.6%
- American Airlines on-time record77.5%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. SFO to JFK and JFK to SFO are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed SFO to JFK’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.