Route reliability record
LAX→RDU
Los Angeles to Raleigh
- Flights
- 801
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,239 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, about a point 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 an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 801 LAX to RDU flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 382 at 81.7% on time.
Best time to fly LAX to RDU: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 86.5%, against 78.6% 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
78.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 793 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.75%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
81.7% on time across 382 flights
These figures cover 801 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 RDU
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 81.7% of the time; American Airlines manages 75.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 419 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 382 | 81.7% | 49 min | 0.79% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 419 | 75.7% | 123 min | 0.72% | B+ |
Delta leads American 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 Raleigh
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 → RDULos Angeles to Raleigh | Delta Air Lines | 81.1% | 81.7% | 0.79% | 11am–2pm, Wed | — |
| 2. LAX → RDULos Angeles to Raleigh | American Airlines | 75.2% | 75.7% | 0.72% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
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–8am—
- 8am–11am611 flights78.4%
- 11am–2pm76 flights88.0%
- 2pm–5pm19 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am95 flights69.9%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 88.0% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 69.9%. 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 611 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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.
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 70.5%. August is the strongest month at 88.1%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 18 points. July was the busiest month here, with 94 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 69.7%. 17 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 47% of the 16,000 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.
- 47%Carrier
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
44% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 44 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 15,815 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 47%, 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 7,408 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.75%, 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
7.9% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 2,239 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.4% on time across 802 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 801 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 RDU after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 801 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 78.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 793 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAX to RDU questions
How often is LAX to RDU 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 21.4% of the 801 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LAX to RDU?
Delta Air Lines leads at 81.7% on time across 382 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 75.7%, 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 RDU?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 88.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 69.9%, 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 RDU?
March is the weakest month at 70.5% on time, compared with 88.1% in August. Across the year that is 18 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
- RDU to LAX — the return legseparate record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on LAX to RDU81.7%
- American Airlines on LAX to RDU75.7%
- LAX to SFO, a related route64.8%
- ATL to RDU, a related route80.4%
- LAX to JFK, a related route79.1%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record81.7%
- American Airlines on-time record75.7%
- 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 RDU and RDU 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.