Carrier route record

DLLAX→MCI

Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to Kansas City

Flights: 619
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 48%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on LAX to MCI 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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 619 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's LAX to MCI record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 109 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 611 completed flights

Avg delay

76 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.97%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.7%

Every carrier on LAX to MCI, 1,288 flights

These figures cover 619 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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

Delta against every carrier on LAX to MCI

Delta flew 619 of the 1,288 flights on LAX to MCI, about 48% of it. Its 88.5% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 95.2% to Southwest at 75.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on LAX to MCI
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	85	95.2%	40 min	0.00%	A+
Delta Air Lines (this page)	619	88.5%	76 min	0.97%	A+
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	86	86.9%	66 min	1.16%	A
Southwest Airlines	498	75.3%	52 min	1.00%	B

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on LAX to MCI

DL 151709:3093.2% · 341 flights

Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 10 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–8am—
8am–11am340 flights93.1%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm14 flights—
5pm–8pm265 flights82.8%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 93.1% of the time, against 82.8% 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 340 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on LAX to MCI through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, December worst

December is the weak month at 78.1% on time, against 94.4% in September. 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 61 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 93.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 86.2%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 53% of the 5,340 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.

Carrier
53%
Late-arriving aircraft
39%
National Airspace System
8%

39% 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 5,340 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 39 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 5,340 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 53%, 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 2,830 of the 5,340 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 0.97% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.32%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.1% 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 1,363 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 92.2% on time across 619 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 619 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 Delta on LAX to MCI

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 619 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 88.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 611 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