Carrier route record
DLLAX→MCI
Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to Kansas City
- Flights
- 616
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 46%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 12 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 616 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's LAX to MCI record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 124 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 610 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.49%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
82.3%
Every carrier on LAX to MCI, 1,349 flights
These figures cover 616 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on LAX to MCI
Delta flew 616 of the 1,349 flights on LAX to MCI, about 46% of it. Its 89.7% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 94.3% to Southwest at 71.2%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 141 | 94.3% | 30 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 616 | 89.7% | 78 min | 0.49% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 32 | 83.9% | 88 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 560 | 71.2% | 54 min | 0.89% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on LAX to MCI
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Delta 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 616 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am337 flights93.1%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm20 flights—
- 5pm–8pm259 flights85.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 93.1% on time for the 8am–11am window against 85.2% for 5pm–8pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 337 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on LAX to MCI through the year
December is the weak month at 78.1% on time, against 94.5% in August. 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 94.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 87.5%, a spread of 7 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on LAX to MCI runs when it is late
Delta on LAX to MCI often beats the schedule: 252 of 610 completed flights, 41%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 63 late arrivals split 22 under half an hour, 17 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 24 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early252 flights41.3%
- Within 15 min295 flights48.4%
- 15–29 min late22 flights3.6%
- 30–59 min late17 flights2.8%
- 1–2 hours late14 flights2.3%
- 2+ hours late10 flights1.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 610 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
18 of 73 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 25% of them. Only 8 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on LAX to MCI
The latest arrival of the period was on 8 December 2025, 6 hours 34 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 8 December 2025 | 6 hours 34 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 March 2026 | 6 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 January 2026 | 4 hours 52 minutes | Carrier |
| 1 December 2025 | 4 hours 49 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 March 2026 | 4 hours 22 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 58% of the 4,911 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Carrier
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%National Airspace System
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,911 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 36 to one. The split is drawn from 4,911 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,841 of the 4,911 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.49%, 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 costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.9% 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 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.
The return leg runs 91.8% on time across 616 flights, within 2 points 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. 616 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. 616 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 89.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 610 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to MCI, every carrier
- Delta on MCI to LAX, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on LAX to MCI94.3%
- Southwest Airlines on LAX to MCI71.2%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.