Carrier performance at one airport

OO→LAX

SkyWest Airlines at Los Angeles International

Departures: 40,778
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Routes: 25
Rank here: #1 of 10

SkyWest Airlines at Los Angeles earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 40,778 flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 40,778 at 84.9% on time.

Measured against the airport rather than the country, SkyWest Airlines runs 5 points ahead of the 79.5% weighted average across all carriers at LAX. That is the comparison worth making: every operator here works the same runways, the same airspace and the same weather.

On time

84.9%

40,380 completed departures

Avg delay

70 min

Across delayed flights only

Cancelled

0.62%

At LAX, this carrier only

Rank here

Of 10 carriers clearing the floor at LAX

These figures cover 41,000 flights between September 2025 and August 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.

Against the competition

Every carrier at LAX, ranked

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 84.9% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 72.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 25,511 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance of all carriers departing LAX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	40,778	84.9%	70 min	0.62%	B+
United Airlines	29,614	82.5%	62 min	0.50%	B+
Delta Air Lines	37,561	80.9%	68 min	1.16%	B
Alaska Airlines	9,969	80.0%	55 min	0.82%	B+
Spirit Airlines	2,730	76.4%	74 min	2.97%	B
American Airlines	29,810	76.0%	85 min	1.32%	B
JetBlue Airways	7,733	75.7%	68 min	2.66%	B
Hawaiian Airlines	643	74.0%	87 min	1.24%	C
Frontier Airlines	5,699	73.6%	78 min	1.67%	C
Southwest Airlines	25,511	72.3%	50 min	0.54%	C+

The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

Route by route

Where SkyWest Airlines flies from LAX

SkyWest Airlines operates 25 routes out of LAX with enough volume to report. Route records inside one carrier at one airport still spread widely, because a short shuttle and a transcontinental have very different exposure to a late inbound.

SkyWest Airlines routes from LAX
Route	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
LAX to SMF · Sacramento	3,559	87.7%	76 min	0.37%	A+
LAX to PHX · Phoenix	2,677	87.2%	61 min	0.71%	A+
LAX to SFO · San Francisco	2,515	66.6%	58 min	1.19%	C
LAX to SAN · San Diego	2,162	83.9%	62 min	1.06%	B
LAX to TUS · Tucson	2,127	83.4%	84 min	0.42%	B+
LAX to RNO · Reno	1,973	91.7%	63 min	0.30%	A+
LAX to SJC · San Jose	1,805	90.7%	58 min	0.39%	A+
LAX to ABQ · Albuquerque	1,728	86.6%	74 min	0.29%	A+
LAX to BOI · Boise	1,325	89.7%	74 min	0.08%	A+
LAX to SEA · Seattle	1,315	83.4%	72 min	0.68%	B+
LAX to ASE · Aspen	1,226	77.9%	93 min	2.45%	B
LAX to DEN · Denver	1,206	82.0%	62 min	0.75%	B+
LAX to AUS · Austin	921	84.0%	57 min	0.33%	B+
LAX to OKC · Oklahoma City	910	87.0%	75 min	0.77%	A+
LAX to FAT · Fresno	765	87.0%	82 min	0.65%	A+
LAX to ELP · El Paso	756	84.0%	98 min	0.40%	B+
LAX to SLC · Salt Lake City	720	88.0%	69 min	0.00%	A+
LAX to MRY · Monterey	719	90.3%	57 min	0.70%	A+
LAX to SAT · San Antonio	697	85.9%	68 min	0.29%	A+
LAX to STS · Santa Rosa	688	89.3%	63 min	2.47%	A
LAX to SBA · Santa Barbara	681	88.2%	105 min	1.03%	A
LAX to GEG · Spokane	664	89.7%	79 min	0.30%	A+
LAX to SBP · San Luis Obispo	629	86.3%	81 min	0.32%	A+
LAX to OMA · Omaha	616	84.2%	61 min	0.65%	B+
LAX to PDX · Portland	563	77.0%	84 min	0.36%	B+

Flight by flight

SkyWest Airlines flight numbers from LAX

31 SkyWest Airlines flight numbers leaving LAX flew their main route often enough to have a record of their own. Grouped by destination.

Departure window

Best time of day for this operation

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 41,000 flights.

5am–8am1,116 flights87.0%
8am–11am12,377 flights86.8%
11am–2pm5,866 flights85.0%
2pm–5pm6,837 flights82.9%
5pm–8pm8,160 flights84.7%
8pm–5am6,422 flights83.5%

Scale runs 75% to 90%.

The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 87.0% on time for the 5am–8am window against 82.9% for 2pm–5pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 12,377 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Seasonal pattern

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, July worst

July is the worst month at 81.3% on time, 8 points below September, the best at 89.5%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 3,616 flights.

Delay causes

What holds this operation up

Carrier
49%
Late-arriving aircraft
25%
National Airspace System
17%
Extreme weather
9%
Security
0%

The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 206,000 of the 424,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 424,189 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.62%, below the national 1.89% 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.

5.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

40,778 flights sit behind these numbers, which is a large enough sample that the headline rate is not moving on noise. Where a sub-group falls below 30 flights the site shows a dash instead of a percentage.

Put together: the carrier matters more than the hour here. SkyWest Airlines at 84.9% against Southwest Airlines at 72.3% is 13 points of difference, while the spread across departure windows is only 4 points. Choose the operator, then the time. 40,380 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

SkyWest Airlines at LAX

How often is SkyWest Airlines at LAX delayed?

About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.1% of the 40,778 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.

Which airline is most reliable on SkyWest Airlines at LAX?

SkyWest Airlines leads at 84.9% on time across 40,778 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 72.3%, a gap of 13 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 SkyWest Airlines at LAX?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.0% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 82.9%, 4 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 SkyWest Airlines at LAX?

July is the weakest month at 81.3% on time, compared with 89.5% in September. Across the year that is 8 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

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