Carrier route record
DLLAX→SFO
Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to San Francisco
- Flights
- 2,373
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 21%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on LAX to SFO draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is roughly 55 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 2,373 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
60.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,336 completed flights
Avg delay
53 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.56%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
60.1%
Every carrier on LAX to SFO, 11,437 flights
These figures cover 2,373 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on LAX to SFO
Delta flew 2,373 of the 11,437 flights on LAX to SFO, about 21% of it. Its 60.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 60.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four 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 (this page) | 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
Delta flight numbers on LAX to SFO
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Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 42 points, against 19 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am355 flights94.2%
- 8am–11am526 flights53.5%
- 11am–2pm368 flights60.3%
- 2pm–5pm386 flights51.8%
- 5pm–8pm289 flights59.4%
- 8pm–5am449 flights53.0%
Scale runs 45% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.2% of the time, against 51.8% for the afternoon window. That is 42 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 526 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on LAX to SFO through the year
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 41.8%. March is the strongest month at 85.9%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 44 points. May was the busiest month here, with 211 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 66.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 53.8%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on LAX to SFO runs when it is late
The 914 late arrivals split 286 under half an hour, 364 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 264 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early527 flights22.6%
- Within 15 min895 flights38.3%
- 15–29 min late286 flights12.2%
- 30–59 min late364 flights15.6%
- 1–2 hours late202 flights8.6%
- 2+ hours late62 flights2.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 2,336 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
79 of 654 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 12% of them. In the other direction, 339 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 Delta on LAX to SFO
The latest arrival of the period was on 19 September 2025, 6 hours 46 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 19 September 2025 | 6 hours 46 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 October 2025 | 6 hours 27 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 19 September 2025 | 5 hours 42 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 June 2026 | 5 hours 22 minutes | Carrier |
| 5 July 2026 | 5 hours 5 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 54% of the 49,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
54% 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 26,000 minutes out of 49,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 48,777 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.56% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
11.3% 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 69.8% on time across 2,373 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,373 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.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on LAX to SFO
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. March runs 85.9% on time and May 41.8%, a swing of 44 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 2,336 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to SFO, every carrier
- Delta 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%
- Alaska Airlines on LAX to SFO50.9%
- Southwest Airlines on LAX to SFO50.7%
- Frontier Airlines on LAX to SFO47.7%
- Delta Air Lines 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
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.