Route reliability record
LAX→ABQ
Los Angeles to Albuquerque
- Flights
- 2,198
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 677 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns a A+. 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 2,198 flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,718 at 87.0% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 84 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,189 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.27%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
87.0% on time across 1,718 flights
These figures cover 2,198 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on LAX to ABQ
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,718 | 87.0% | 75 min | 0.29% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 480 | 82.5% | 40 min | 0.21% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 87.0%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 2,198 flights.
- 5am–8am79 flights89.7%
- 8am–11am859 flights90.0%
- 11am–2pm116 flights86.2%
- 2pm–5pm382 flights83.9%
- 5pm–8pm328 flights80.8%
- 8pm–5am434 flights83.1%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.0% of the time, against 80.8% for the evening window. That is 9 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 859 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 2,198 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
December is the weak month at 81.8% on time, against 89.7% in August. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 207 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 82.1%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 63% of the 20,000 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.
- 63%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%Extreme weather
- 5%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 63%, 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 13,000 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 20,039 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.27%, 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.3% 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 677 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 87.9% on time across 2,197 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 2,198 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.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: take the 8am–11am departure, avoid December if the dates are flexible, and if two carriers are within a few dollars of each other, SkyWest is the one with the record behind it. None of that guarantees an on-time arrival; it moves the odds by 9 points, which is the most any booking decision can do. 2,189 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAX to ABQ questions
How often is LAX to ABQ delayed?
About one flight in seven arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.0% of the 2,198 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LAX to ABQ?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 87.0% on time across 1,718 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 82.5%, a gap of 5 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 LAX to ABQ?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 80.8%, 9 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 LAX to ABQ?
December is the weakest month at 81.8% on time, compared with 89.7% in August. Across the year that is 8 points between the best and worst months. The seasonal swing is modest enough that it should not decide when you travel.
Related
Where to go next
- ABQ to LAX — the return legseparate record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record87.0%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record82.5%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
Direction matters. LAX to ABQ and ABQ to LAX are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.