Carrier route record
ASSFO→JFK
Alaska Airlines · San Francisco to New York
- Flights
- 1,107
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on SFO to JFK lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,107 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, JetBlue Airways, flew 1,945 at 81.4% on time.
JetBlue Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 81.4% on time across 1,945 flights.
Key figures
On time
76.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,082 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.63%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.1%
Every carrier on SFO to JFK, 6,729 flights
These figures cover 1,107 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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 JFK
Alaska flew 1,107 of the 6,729 flights on SFO to JFK, about 16% of it. Its 76.8% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 81.4% to Alaska at 76.8%.
The three 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 | 1,945 | 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 (this page) | 1,107 | 76.8% | 55 min | 1.63% | B |
No carrier stands out. JetBlue tops the table at 81.4%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Alaska flight numbers on SFO 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 31 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am291 flights89.1%
- 8am–11am285 flights74.8%
- 11am–2pm216 flights58.1%
- 2pm–5pm27 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am288 flights80.9%
Scale runs 50% 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 58.1% on time against 89.1% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 291 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Alaska on SFO to JFK through the year
July is the worst month at 47.3% on time, 44 points below February, the best at 91.7%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 119 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.8%. 10 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 49% of the 14,000 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.
- 49%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
49% 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 6,735 minutes out of 14,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 13,839 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.63% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.63%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.9% 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 2,586 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 1,108 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,107 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 Alaska on SFO to JFK
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 91.7% on time and July 47.3%, a swing of 44 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,082 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to JFK, every carrier
- Alaska on JFK to SFO, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on SFO to JFK81.4%
- American Airlines on SFO to JFK80.9%
- Delta Air Lines on SFO to JFK79.9%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- 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
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.