Carrier route record

UALAX→AUS

United Airlines · Los Angeles to Austin

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 LAX to AUS 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 55 minutes. That rests on 451 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 817 at 85.6% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, United's LAX to AUS record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 99 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 448 completed flights

Avg delay

53 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.22%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.3%

Every carrier on LAX to AUS, 4,076 flights

These figures cover 451 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 LAX to AUS

United flew 451 of the 4,076 flights on LAX to AUS, about 11% of it. Its 87.5% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 87.5% to American at 68.7%. 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 85.6% of the time; American Airlines manages 68.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 480 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on LAX to AUS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines (this page)	451	87.5%	53 min	0.22%	A+
SkyWest Airlines	817	85.6%	58 min	0.49%	A+
Delta Air Lines	1,285	81.5%	73 min	1.09%	B
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	17	76.5%	56 min	0.00%	B+
Southwest Airlines	1,026	68.8%	51 min	0.58%	C+
American Airlines	480	68.7%	95 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 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 451 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am152 flights88.8%
11am–2pm18 flights—
2pm–5pm106 flights89.5%
5pm–8pm120 flights89.1%
8pm–5am55 flights79.6%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 89.5% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 79.6%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 152 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on LAX to AUS through the year

Jul–Sep 202569 flights91.2%
Oct–Dec 2025103 flights90.3%
Jan–Mar 2026144 flights84.0%
Apr–Jun 2026135 flights87.2%

Scale runs 75% 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 87.5% on time across 451 flights.

Quarter by quarter United on LAX to AUS held fairly steady: 91.2% in Jul–Sep 2025, 90.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 84.0% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 87.2% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 94.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 83.3%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why United runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 2,990 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
40%
Carrier
34%
National Airspace System
27%

40% 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 2,990 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 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 2,990 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.22%, 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 3.6% 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 88.8% 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 LAX to AUS

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 87.5% 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