Route reliability record
LAX→ASE
Los Angeles to Aspen
- Flights
- 1,255
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 737 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,255 LAX to ASE flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly LAX to ASE: a 5pm–8pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 91.1%, against 77.3% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
77.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,165 completed flights
Avg delay
98 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.47%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
77.3% on time across 1,255 flights
These figures cover 1,255 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.3% 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 LAX to ASE
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 | 1,255 | 77.3% | 98 min | 2.47% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on LAX to ASE
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 14 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–8am19 flights—
- 8am–11am592 flights77.8%
- 11am–2pm204 flights72.0%
- 2pm–5pm285 flights76.6%
- 5pm–8pm155 flights85.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 72.0% on time against 85.6% for 5pm–8pm. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 592 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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 66.1% on time, against 98.2% 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 91.1% on time and Saturday the weakest at 67.0%. 24 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 48% of the 26,000 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.
- 48%Carrier
- 32%National Airspace System
- 11%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, 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 12,000 of the 26,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 25,774 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.47% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 4.70%.
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. 11.3% 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 73.0% on time across 1,257 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 1,255 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 ASE 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. November runs 98.2% on time and December 66.1%, a swing of 32 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,165 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAX to ASE questions
How often is LAX to ASE delayed?
Roughly 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 22.7% of the 1,255 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is LAX to ASE compared with the rest of the country?
77.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LAX to ASE?
The 5pm–8pm departure window is the strongest at 85.6% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 72.0%, 14 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 ASE?
December is the weakest month at 66.1% on time, compared with 98.2% in November. Across the year that is 32 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
- ASE to LAX — the return legseparate record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- LAX to SFO, a related route64.8%
- DEN to ASE, a related route74.8%
- LAX to JFK, a related route79.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record77.3%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. LAX to ASE and ASE 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.