Carrier route record
ASLAX→SFO
Alaska Airlines · Los Angeles to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,049
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on LAX to SFO earns an F+, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 50.9% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 26 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average about 55 minutes. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 1,049 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 2,515 at 66.6% on time.
SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 66.6% on time across 2,515 flights.
Key figures
On time
50.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,042 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.67%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
60.1%
Every carrier on LAX to SFO, 11,437 flights
These figures cover 1,049 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Alaska against every carrier on LAX to SFO
Alaska flew 1,049 of the 11,437 flights on LAX to SFO, about 9% of it. Its 50.9% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 60.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 66.6% to Frontier at 47.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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.
| 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 (this page) | 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.
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Departure window
When Alaska runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 56 points, against 19 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am179 flights85.5%
- 8am–11am233 flights29.8%
- 11am–2pm165 flights51.8%
- 2pm–5pm155 flights54.2%
- 5pm–8pm170 flights31.8%
- 8pm–5am147 flights58.9%
Scale runs 20% to 90%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 85.5% of the time, against 29.8% for the morning window. That is 56 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 233 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Alaska on LAX to SFO through the year
- Oct–Dec 202525 flights—
- Jan–Mar 2026126 flights84.1%
- Apr–Jun 2026535 flights44.5%
- Jul–Sep 2026363 flights48.2%
Scale runs 35% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 50.9% on time across 1,049 flights.
Alaska on LAX to SFO did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 84.1% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 44.5%, a swing of 40 points on roughly 350 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 57.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 47.2%, a spread of 11 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Alaska on LAX to SFO runs when it is late
The 512 late arrivals split 151 under half an hour, 197 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 164 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early121 flights11.6%
- Within 15 min409 flights39.3%
- 15–29 min late151 flights14.5%
- 30–59 min late197 flights18.9%
- 1–2 hours late133 flights12.8%
- 2+ hours late31 flights3.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,042 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 384 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 25 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 153 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at SFO.
The worst days
Worst days for Alaska on LAX to SFO
The latest arrival of the period was on 22 June 2026, 8 hours 3 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 22 June 2026 | 8 hours 3 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 August 2026 | 4 hours 42 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 22 March 2026 | 3 hours 54 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 May 2026 | 3 hours 48 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 20 May 2026 | 3 hours 40 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Alaska runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 71% of the 28,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 71%National Airspace System
- 16%Late-arriving aircraft
- 11%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
71% 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 20,000 minutes out of 28,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 27,682 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.67%, 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
15.7% 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 66.4% on time across 1,046 flights, 16 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 16 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,049 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 Alaska on LAX to SFO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,049 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 50.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,042 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to SFO, every carrier
- Alaska on SFO to LAX, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on LAX to SFO66.6%
- American Airlines on LAX to SFO63.9%
- United Airlines on LAX to SFO62.9%
- Delta Air Lines on LAX to SFO60.9%
- Southwest Airlines on LAX to SFO50.7%
- Frontier Airlines on LAX to SFO47.7%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.