Carrier route record

AASFO→LAX

American Airlines · San Francisco to Los Angeles

Flights: 303
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 3%
Carriers: 8

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.

American on SFO to LAX lands a B+, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 303 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 3,335 at 77.7% on time.

United Airlines is the most reliable of the six carriers covered here at 77.7% on time across 3,335 flights.

On time

76.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 303 completed flights

Avg delay

100 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

70.9%

Every carrier on SFO to LAX, 11,437 flights

These figures cover 303 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Carrier by carrier

American against every carrier on SFO to LAX

American flew 303 of the 11,437 flights on SFO to LAX, about 3% of it. Its 76.2% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of eight carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 77.7% to Envoy at 0.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 77.7% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 56.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,472 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on SFO to LAX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	3,335	77.7%	46 min	0.15%	B+
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	303	76.2%	100 min	0.00%	B+
SkyWest Airlines	2,513	72.9%	61 min	1.07%	C
Delta Air Lines	2,373	69.8%	63 min	1.56%	C
Frontier Airlines	394	66.5%	77 min	1.52%	C
Alaska Airlines	1,046	66.4%	47 min	0.86%	C+
Southwest Airlines	1,472	56.7%	62 min	0.68%	D+
Envoy Airthin sample	1	0.0%	35 min	0.00%	F+

The spread between United and Southwest is 21 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 21 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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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 29 points, against 21 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am203 flights85.2%
8am–11am1 flights—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm31 flights61.3%
8pm–5am68 flights55.9%

Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.9% on time, against 85.2% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 203 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on SFO to LAX through the year

Jul–Sep 202546 flights82.6%
Oct–Dec 202581 flights74.1%
Jan–Mar 202678 flights84.6%
Apr–Jun 202632 flights75.0%
Jul–Sep 202666 flights65.2%

Scale runs 55% to 90%.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 76.2% on time across 303 flights.

American on SFO to LAX did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 84.6% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 65.2%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 61 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 86.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 65.4%, a spread of 21 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late American on SFO to LAX runs when it is late

American on SFO to LAX often beats the schedule: 85 of 303 completed flights, 28%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When American on SFO to LAX is late it tends to be very late: 38 of its 72 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 16 were two hours or more.

15+ min early85 flights28.1%
Within 15 min146 flights48.2%
15–29 min late20 flights6.6%
30–59 min late14 flights4.6%
1–2 hours late22 flights7.3%
2+ hours late16 flights5.3%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 303 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 64 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 7 made it up before arrival. 15 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for American on SFO to LAX

The latest arrival of the period was on 25 August 2026, 12 hours 31 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of American on SFO to LAX in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
25 August 2026	12 hours 31 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
2 September 2025	10 hours 18 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
12 November 2025	7 hours 21 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
23 December 2025	5 hours 2 minutes	Carrier
26 September 2025	3 hours 55 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 62% of the 7,190 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
62%
Carrier
27%
National Airspace System
11%
Extreme weather
0%

62% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,190 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 62 to one. The split is drawn from 7,190 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 85.2% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

12.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

At 337 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 63.9% on time across 302 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 303 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 American on SFO to LAX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 303 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 76.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 303 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures