Route reliability record
ASE→LAX
Aspen to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 1,257
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 737 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 6.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,257 ASE to LAX flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly ASE to LAX: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 80.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 79.8%, against 73.0% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 46 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,166 completed flights
Avg delay
115 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.84%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
73.0% on time across 1,257 flights
These figures cover 1,257 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.4% 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
Which airline is most reliable on ASE to LAX
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,257 | 73.0% | 115 min | 6.84% | C− |
Flight by flight
Flights on ASE to LAX
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 12 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am2 flights—
- 8am–11am207 flights80.1%
- 11am–2pm457 flights72.2%
- 2pm–5pm238 flights75.5%
- 5pm–8pm325 flights67.8%
- 8pm–5am28 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 80.1% of the time, against 67.8% for the evening window. That is 12 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 457 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 31 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 60.9% on time, against 91.4% in November. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 201 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 79.8% on time and Saturday the weakest at 64.8%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 36,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Extreme weather
- 31%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 13%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 34% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 5.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 36,273 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 6.84%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in fifteen 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 15.4% 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.
The 737 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.3% on time across 1,255 flights, 4 points above 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 1,257 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in LAX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.84% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,166 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ASE to LAX questions
How often is ASE to LAX delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.0% of the 1,257 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is ASE to LAX compared with the rest of the country?
73.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ASE to LAX?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 80.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 67.8%, 12 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 December delays on ASE to LAX?
December is the weakest month at 60.9% on time, compared with 91.4% in November. Across the year that is 31 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to ASE — the return legseparate record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- ASE to DEN, a related route75.2%
- SFO to LAX, a related route73.9%
- ASE to DFW, a related route65.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record73.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. ASE to LAX and LAX to ASE are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.