Route reliability record
SFO→JFK
San Francisco to New York
- Flights
- 6,729
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,586 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 6,729 flights, of which JetBlue Airways flew 1,945 at 81.4% on time.
JetBlue Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 81.4% on time across 1,945 flights.
Key figures
On time
80.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 6,555 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.98%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
JetBlue
81.4% on time across 1,945 flights
These figures cover 6,729 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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
Which airline is most reliable on SFO to JFK
The four carriers here are closely matched: 5 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 | 1,945 | 81.4% | 76 min | 1.95% | B |
| American Airlines | 1,448 | 80.9% | 119 min | 2.90% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 2,229 | 79.9% | 69 min | 1.57% | B |
| Alaska Airlines | 1,107 | 76.8% | 55 min | 1.63% | B |
No carrier stands out. JetBlue tops the table at 81.4%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1,436 flights90.4%
- 8am–11am1,206 flights81.0%
- 11am–2pm1,530 flights69.4%
- 2pm–5pm892 flights76.4%
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am1,664 flights82.2%
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 69.4% on time against 90.4% 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 1,664 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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.
July is the worst month at 69.2% on time, 17 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. June was the busiest month here, with 611 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.7%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 102,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 35,000 of the 102,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 102,278 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.98% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.61%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.6% 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 are the a little over an hour kind, 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 74.1% on time across 6,730 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 6,729 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.
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 July 69.2%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 6,555 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to JFK questions
How often is SFO to JFK delayed?
About one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.9% of the 6,729 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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 81.4% on time across 1,945 flights. Alaska Airlines is at the other end on 76.8%, a gap of 5 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 90.4% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 69.4%, 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 July delays on SFO to JFK?
July is the weakest month at 69.2% on time, compared with 86.4% in September. Across the year that is 17 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-time record81.4%
- American Airlines on-time record80.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record79.9%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.