Carrier route record

AASFO→LAX

American Airlines · San Francisco to Los Angeles

Flights: 345
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 3%
Carriers: 8

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. About one flight in four 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 345 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 3,263 at 78.4% on time.

United Airlines is the most reliable of the six carriers covered here at 78.4% on time across 3,263 flights.

On time

76.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 344 completed flights

Avg delay

108 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.29%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

73.9%

Every carrier on SFO to LAX, 11,015 flights

These figures cover 345 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.8% 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 LAX

American flew 345 of the 11,015 flights on SFO to LAX, about 3% of it. Its 76.7% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of eight carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 78.4% 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 78.4% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 61.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,369 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	3,263	78.4%	49 min	0.28%	B+
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	345	76.7%	108 min	0.29%	B+
SkyWest Airlines	2,588	76.6%	60 min	1.04%	B
Delta Air Lines	2,373	73.6%	65 min	1.56%	C
Alaska Airlines	685	69.7%	47 min	0.73%	C+
Frontier Airlines	391	68.6%	84 min	1.53%	C
Southwest Airlines	1,369	61.8%	60 min	0.58%	D+
Envoy Airthin sample	1	0.0%	35 min	0.00%	F+

The spread between United and Southwest is 17 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 17 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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 17 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am239 flights84.9%
8am–11am1 flights—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm31 flights61.3%
8pm–5am74 flights56.2%

Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.2% on time, against 84.9% 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 239 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on SFO to LAX through the year

Jul–Sep 2025154 flights74.5%
Oct–Dec 202581 flights74.1%
Jan–Mar 202678 flights84.6%
Apr–Jun 202632 flights75.0%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 76.7% on time across 345 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 Oct–Dec 2025 at 74.1%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 86 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, Friday is the strongest day at 85.7% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 69.7%. 16 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 8,647 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
46%
Carrier
42%
National Airspace System
12%
Extreme weather
0%

46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 8,647 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 46 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 8,647 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, 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 3,589 of the 8,647 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.29%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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 61.3% on time across 343 flights, 15 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 15 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 345 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. 345 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 76.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 344 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures