Route reliability record

LAX→SFO

Los Angeles to San Francisco

Flights: 11,437
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Distance: 337 mi
Carriers: 7

This route draws a D+. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 11,437 LAX to SFO flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 2,515 at 66.6% on time.

Best time to fly LAX to SFO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 67.3%, against 60.1% for the route overall.

SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the six carriers covered here at 66.6% on time across 2,515 flights.

On time

60.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 11,344 completed flights

Avg delay

57 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.80%

National rate is 1.89%

Best carrier

SkyWest

66.6% on time across 2,515 flights

These figures cover 11,000 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

Carrier by carrier

Which airline is most reliable on LAX to SFO

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 66.6% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 47.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 395 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on LAX to SFO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	2,515	66.6%	58 min	1.19%	C
American Airlinesthin sample	302	63.9%	76 min	0.00%	D+
United Airlines	3,330	62.9%	56 min	0.12%	D+
Delta Air Lines	2,373	60.9%	53 min	1.56%	D
Alaska Airlines	1,049	50.9%	54 min	0.67%	F+
Southwest Airlines	1,473	50.7%	62 min	0.34%	F+
Frontier Airlines	395	47.7%	66 min	2.28%	F

The spread between SkyWest and Frontier is 19 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 19 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

Flight by flight

Flights on LAX to SFO

The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.

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 San Francisco

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. 5 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.

Most reliable ways to fly from LAX to SFO
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. LGB → OAKLong Beach to Oakland	Southwest Airlines	88.1%	88.5%	0.45%	5am–8am, 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. ONT → OAKOntario to Oakland	Southwest Airlines	85.5%	86.0%	0.55%	5am–8am, 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.

Plan this trip by month, day and time

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 36 points, against 19 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am1,615 flights85.8%
8am–11am2,003 flights49.8%
11am–2pm1,971 flights62.6%
2pm–5pm1,411 flights55.4%
5pm–8pm2,325 flights58.3%
8pm–5am2,112 flights53.2%

Scale runs 40% to 90%.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 85.8% of the time, against 49.8% for the morning window. That is 36 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 2,325 flights scheduled in it.

Explore

Filter LAX to SFO 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 SFO, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 85.8% on time and the worst is 8am–11am at 49.8%, a wide gap of 36.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.

5–8am85.8%
8–11am49.8%
11am–2pm62.6%
2–5pm55.4%
5–8pm58.3%
8pm–5am53.2%

best all US flightsScale 40% to 95%.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 41 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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.March best, May worst

Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 44.1%. March is the strongest month at 85.2%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 41 points. August was the busiest month here, with 1,132 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 67.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 55.1%, a spread of 12 points.

Delay causes

Why this route gets delayed

National Airspace System accounts for 56% of the 259,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

National Airspace System
56%
Late-arriving aircraft
24%
Carrier
18%
Extreme weather
1%
Security
0%

56% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 146,000 minutes out of 259,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 259,235 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.80%, 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

12.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

At 337 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.9% on time across 11,437 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 11,437 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.

Work out the risk of missing a connection in SFO after this flight

What to do with this

Booking this route

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. March runs 85.2% on time and May 44.1%, a swing of 41 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 11,344 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

LAX to SFO questions

How often is LAX to SFO delayed?

Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 39.9% of the 11,437 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.

Which airline is most reliable on LAX to SFO?

SkyWest Airlines leads at 66.6% on time across 2,515 flights. Frontier Airlines is at the other end on 47.7%, a gap of 19 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 SFO?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.8% on time. The 8am–11am window is the weakest at 49.8%, 36 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 May delays on LAX to SFO?

May is the weakest month at 44.1% on time, compared with 85.2% in March. Across the year that is 41 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

Direction matters. LAX to SFO and SFO to LAX are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.

Embed LAX to SFO’s on-time badge on your site

Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.

<iframe src="https://delayatlas.com/embed/route/lax-sfo" width="320" height="132" style="border:0;max-width:100%" loading="lazy" title="LAX to SFO on-time record"></iframe>
<p style="font:12px/1.4 sans-serif;margin:4px 0 0">LAX to SFO flight delay statistics from <a href="https://delayatlas.com/routes/lax-to-sfo">DelayAtlas</a></p>

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.