Route reliability record
HOU→LAX
Houston to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 1,188
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,390 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about 45 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,188 HOU to LAX flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
Best time to fly HOU to LAX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.1% of the time and Friday flights 80.5%, against 73.6% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
73.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,186 completed flights
Avg delay
45 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.17%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
73.6% on time across 1,188 flights
These figures cover 1,188 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on HOU 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,188 | 73.6% | 45 min | 0.17% | C+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Houston to Los Angeles
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. IAH → SNAHouston to Santa Ana | United Airlines | 88.5% | 88.5% | 0.00% | 8am–11am, Tue | UA 1383 09:30 |
| 2. IAH → LAXHouston to Los Angeles | Delta Air Lines | 86.9% | 87.7% | 0.93% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 1216 07:00 |
| 3. IAH → LAXHouston to Los Angeles | United Airlines | 85.5% | 85.7% | 0.20% | 5am–8am, Wed | UA 2431 06:00 |
| 4. IAH → LAXHouston to Los Angeles | SkyWest Airlines | 78.9% | 79.3% | 0.49% | 2pm–5pm, Sat | — |
| 5. HOU → LAXHouston to Los Angeles | Southwest Airlines | 73.5% | 73.6% | 0.17% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 34 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am204 flights92.1%
- 8am–11am182 flights91.7%
- 11am–2pm89 flights74.2%
- 2pm–5pm225 flights68.0%
- 5pm–8pm135 flights58.5%
- 8pm–5am353 flights62.9%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.5% on time, against 92.1% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 353 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter HOU to LAX by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On HOU to LAX, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.1% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 58.5%, a wide gap of 33.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.1%
- 8–11am91.7%
- 11am–2pm74.2%
- 2–5pm68.0%
- 5–8pm58.5%
- 8pm–5am62.9%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 37 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.
June is the worst month at 53.2% on time, 37 points below January, the best at 90.3%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 116 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 80.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.8%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 14,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
51% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 23 to one. The split is drawn from 14,221 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,879 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.17%, 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.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.6% 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 about 45 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,390 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 69.4% on time across 1,194 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,188 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 calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 90.3% on time and June 53.2%, a swing of 37 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,186 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
HOU to LAX questions
How often is HOU 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 26.4% of the 1,188 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 45 minutes on average.
How reliable is HOU to LAX compared with the rest of the country?
73.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 4 points against it. That is worth a C+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on HOU to LAX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 58.5%, 34 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 June delays on HOU to LAX?
June is the weakest month at 53.2% on time, compared with 90.3% in January. Across the year that is 37 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 HOU — the return legseparate record
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- HOU to DAL, a related route81.6%
- SFO to LAX, a related route70.9%
- HOU to ATL, a related route79.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record73.6%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. HOU to LAX and LAX to HOU 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.