Route reliability record
LAX→ABQ
Los Angeles to Albuquerque
- Flights
- 2,243
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 677 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns an 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 2,243 LAX to ABQ flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,728 at 86.6% on time.
Best time to fly LAX to ABQ: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 90.4%, against 85.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 77 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,233 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.27%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
86.6% on time across 1,728 flights
These figures cover 2,243 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on LAX to ABQ
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 86.6% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 79.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 515 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,728 | 86.6% | 74 min | 0.29% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 515 | 79.8% | 41 min | 0.19% | B+ |
SkyWest leads Southwest by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on LAX to ABQ
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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Los Angeles to Albuquerque
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LAX → ABQLos Angeles to Albuquerque | SkyWest Airlines | 86.3% | 86.6% | 0.29% | 8am–11am, Wed | OO 4098 19:59 |
| 2. LAX → ABQLos Angeles to Albuquerque | Southwest Airlines | 79.6% | 79.8% | 0.19% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
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 10 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am114 flights89.4%
- 8am–11am857 flights89.3%
- 11am–2pm89 flights83.1%
- 2pm–5pm394 flights84.7%
- 5pm–8pm270 flights79.3%
- 8pm–5am519 flights80.5%
Scale runs 70% to 95%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.4% of the time, against 79.3% for the evening window. That is 10 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 857 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LAX to ABQ 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 LAX to ABQ, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 89.4% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 79.3%, a wide gap of 10.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am89.4%
- 8–11am89.3%
- 11am–2pm83.1%
- 2–5pm84.7%
- 5–8pm79.3%
- 8pm–5am80.5%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 2,243 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 88.3% in October. 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 90.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 80.9%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 56% of the 21,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 56%Carrier
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%Extreme weather
- 5%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 56%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 12,000 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 21,275 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 89.4% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.27%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 88.1% on time across 2,242 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,243 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 ABQ after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: avoid the 5pm–8pm departure. It runs 79.3% on time against 89.4% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 10 points is the largest single thing you control here. SkyWest Airlines is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 2,233 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 arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.0% of the 2,243 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LAX to ABQ?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 86.6% on time across 1,728 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 79.8%, a gap of 7 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 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 79.3%, 10 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 88.3% in October. Across the year that is 7 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
- Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on LAX to ABQ86.6%
- Southwest Airlines on LAX to ABQ79.8%
- LAX to SFO, a related route60.1%
- PHX to ABQ, a related route77.9%
- LAX to JFK, a related route77.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record86.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record79.8%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- The best day of the week to fly, and why it is the second lever
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.
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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.