Route reliability record
LAX→ELP
Los Angeles to El Paso
- Flights
- 1,269
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 715 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,269 LAX to ELP flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 773 at 82.9% on time.
Best time to fly LAX to ELP: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 85.8%, against 80.5% 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
80.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,261 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.32%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
82.9% on time across 773 flights
These figures cover 1,269 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
Which airline is most reliable on LAX to ELP
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 82.9% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 76.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 496 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 773 | 82.9% | 99 min | 0.52% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 496 | 76.8% | 51 min | 0.00% | B+ |
SkyWest leads Southwest by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Los Angeles to El Paso
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 → ELPLos Angeles to El Paso | SkyWest Airlines | 82.5% | 82.9% | 0.52% | 8am–11am, Fri | — |
| 2. LAX → ELPLos Angeles to El Paso | Southwest Airlines | 76.8% | 76.8% | 0.00% | 11am–2pm, 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 18 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am12 flights—
- 8am–11am471 flights89.6%
- 11am–2pm121 flights87.6%
- 2pm–5pm213 flights73.7%
- 5pm–8pm290 flights72.2%
- 8pm–5am162 flights71.9%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 89.6% of the time, against 71.9% for the overnight window. That is 18 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 471 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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.
November is the best month on the calendar at 87.3% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. June was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.8%. 13 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 52% of the 19,000 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.
- 52%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
35% 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 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 35 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 18,835 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, 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 9,858 of the 19,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.32%, 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
7.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 715 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 83.6% on time across 1,265 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 1,269 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 ELP 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 87.3% on time and March 68.6%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,261 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAX to ELP questions
How often is LAX to ELP delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.5% of the 1,269 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LAX to ELP?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 82.9% on time across 773 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 76.8%, a gap of 6 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 ELP?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 89.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 71.9%, 18 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 March delays on LAX to ELP?
March is the weakest month at 68.6% on time, compared with 87.3% in November. Across the year that is 19 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
- ELP to LAX — the return legseparate record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on LAX to ELP82.9%
- Southwest Airlines on LAX to ELP76.8%
- LAX to SFO, a related route64.8%
- DFW to ELP, a related route67.7%
- LAX to JFK, a related route79.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record82.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record76.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. LAX to ELP and ELP 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.