Carrier route record
AASFO→JFK
American Airlines · San Francisco to New York
- Flights
- 1,448
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 22%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on SFO to JFK lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,448 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
80.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,393 completed flights
Avg delay
119 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.90%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.1%
Every carrier on SFO to JFK, 6,729 flights
These figures cover 1,448 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on SFO to JFK
American flew 1,448 of the 6,729 flights on SFO to JFK, about 22% of it. Its 80.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two 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: 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 (this page) | 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.
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on SFO to JFK
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 24 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am353 flights92.1%
- 8am–11am246 flights75.5%
- 11am–2pm320 flights68.1%
- 2pm–5pm177 flights79.3%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am352 flights85.8%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. 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 68.1% on time against 92.1% 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 353 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on SFO to JFK through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 91.6% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. June was the busiest month here, with 147 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 85.2% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 76.6%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 51% of the 32,000 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.
- 51%Carrier
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, 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 16,000 of the 32,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 31,653 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.90%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.5% 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 close to two hours, 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 77.2% on time across 1,448 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,448 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 American on SFO to JFK
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.90% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,393 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to JFK, every carrier
- American on JFK to SFO, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on SFO to JFK81.4%
- Delta Air Lines on SFO to JFK79.9%
- Alaska Airlines on SFO to JFK76.8%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.