Carrier route record

UAAUS→LAX

United Airlines · Austin to Los Angeles

Flights: 451
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 11%
Carriers: 6

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.

United on AUS to LAX earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 451 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 817 at 88.0% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, United's AUS to LAX record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 112 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 448 completed flights

Avg delay

91 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.44%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

81.3%

Every carrier on AUS to LAX, 4,077 flights

These figures cover 451 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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.

Carrier by carrier

United against every carrier on AUS to LAX

United flew 451 of the 4,077 flights on AUS to LAX, about 11% of it. Its 88.8% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 88.8% to American at 71.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 88.0% of the time; American Airlines manages 71.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 482 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on AUS to LAX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines (this page)	451	88.8%	91 min	0.44%	A+
SkyWest Airlines	817	88.0%	71 min	0.49%	A+
Delta Air Lines	1,286	83.0%	69 min	1.09%	B
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	16	75.0%	54 min	0.00%	B+
Southwest Airlines	1,025	75.0%	52 min	0.49%	B+
American Airlines	482	71.5%	98 min	1.04%	C

The spread between SkyWest and American 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 United runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 12 points, against 17 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am115 flights92.2%
8am–11am118 flights93.2%
11am–2pm2 flights—
2pm–5pm161 flights85.5%
5pm–8pm7 flights—
8pm–5am48 flights81.2%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 93.2% of the time, against 81.2% for the overnight 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 161 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on AUS to LAX through the year

Jul–Sep 202569 flights91.2%
Oct–Dec 2025103 flights88.3%
Jan–Mar 2026143 flights90.2%
Apr–Jun 2026136 flights86.6%

Scale runs 80% to 95%. 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 88.8% on time across 451 flights.

Quarter by quarter United on AUS to LAX held fairly steady: 91.2% in Jul–Sep 2025, 88.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 90.2% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 86.6% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 96.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 82.7%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why United runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 4,559 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
54%
Carrier
38%
National Airspace System
7%
Extreme weather
1%

54% 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 4,559 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 48 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 4,559 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 1,751 of the 4,559 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.44%, 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.2% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

The 1,242 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 runs 87.5% on time across 451 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 451 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 United on AUS to LAX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 451 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 88.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 448 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