Route reliability record
LAX→MRY
Los Angeles to Monterey
- Flights
- 855
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 266 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 855 LAX to MRY flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly LAX to MRY: a 2pm–5pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 94.8%, against 89.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 123 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 848 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.58%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
90.7% on time across 793 flights
These figures cover 855 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 MRY
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 | 793 | 90.7% | 52 min | 0.63% | A+ |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 62 | 79.0% | 89 min | 0.00% | B+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Los Angeles to Monterey
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LAX → SJCLos Angeles to San Jose | SkyWest Airlines | 91.1% | 91.4% | 0.34% | 8am–11am, Thu | OO 3883 18:00 |
| 2. LAX → MRYLos Angeles to Monterey | SkyWest Airlines | 90.1% | 90.7% | 0.63% | 2pm–5pm, Tue (route) | — |
| 3. LGB → SJCLong Beach to San Jose | Southwest Airlines | 86.4% | 86.7% | 0.33% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 4. BUR → SJCBurbank to San Jose | Southwest Airlines | 85.8% | 86.8% | 1.10% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 5. SNA → SJCSanta Ana to San Jose | Southwest Airlines | 85.7% | 86.4% | 0.83% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 11 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–11am360 flights89.6%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm228 flights93.3%
- 5pm–8pm109 flights82.6%
- 8pm–5am158 flights90.4%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 93.3% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 82.6%. 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 360 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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.
June is the worst month at 78.3% on time, 17 points below September, the best at 95.5%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. September was the busiest month here, with 88 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 94.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 87.0%. 8 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 4,944 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
47% 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 4,944 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 4,944 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.58%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.8% 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.
At 266 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 87.8% on time across 852 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. 855 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MRY after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 855 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 89.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 848 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAX to MRY questions
How often is LAX to MRY delayed?
About one flight in ten arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 10.1% of the 855 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is LAX to MRY compared with the rest of the country?
89.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 12 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LAX to MRY?
The 2pm–5pm departure window is the strongest at 93.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 82.6%, 11 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 June delays on LAX to MRY?
June is the weakest month at 78.3% on time, compared with 95.5% in September. Across the year that is 17 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
- MRY to LAX — the return legseparate record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- LAX to SFO, a related route64.8%
- PHX to MRY, a related route78.9%
- LAX to JFK, a related route79.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record90.7%
- United Airlines on-time record79.0%
- 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 MRY and MRY 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.