Route reliability record
LAX→MRY
Los Angeles to Monterey
- Flights
- 842
- Period
- September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 842 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 91.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 94.6%, against 88.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 116 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 835 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.59%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
90.3% on time across 719 flights
These figures cover 842 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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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 | 719 | 90.3% | 57 min | 0.70% | A+ |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 123 | 80.5% | 78 min | 0.00% | B+ |
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.
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 | 90.3% | 90.7% | 0.39% | 8am–11am, Tue | OO 3883 18:00 |
| 2. LAX → MRYLos Angeles to Monterey | SkyWest Airlines | 89.7% | 90.3% | 0.70% | 2pm–5pm, Tue | — |
| 3. ONT → SJCOntario to San Jose | Southwest Airlines | 85.8% | 85.9% | 0.08% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. LGB → SJCLong Beach to San Jose | Southwest Airlines | 85.8% | 86.0% | 0.24% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 5. SNA → SJCSanta Ana to San Jose | Southwest Airlines | 85.5% | 86.1% | 0.75% | 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 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 842 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am359 flights88.8%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm218 flights91.6%
- 5pm–8pm115 flights82.6%
- 8pm–5am150 flights89.9%
Scale runs 75% 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 91.6% 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 359 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LAX to MRY by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On LAX to MRY, the best departure window is 2pm–5pm at 91.6% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 82.6%, a real gap of 9.0 points. All US flights leaving 2pm–5pm ran 71.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am88.8%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm91.6%
- 5–8pm82.6%
- 8pm–5am89.9%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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 94.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 86.5%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 5,795 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
54% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 5,795 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 to one. The split is drawn from 5,795 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.59%, 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% 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.
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 86.6% on time across 839 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. 842 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. 842 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 88.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 835 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 nine arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 11.1% of the 842 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is LAX to MRY compared with the rest of the country?
88.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, 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 91.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 82.6%, 9 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
- SkyWest Airlines on LAX to MRY90.3%
- United Airlines on LAX to MRY80.5%
- LAX to SFO, a related route60.1%
- PHX to MRY, a related route80.2%
- LAX to JFK, a related route77.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record90.3%
- United Airlines on-time record80.5%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.