Carrier route record

DLLAX→SJC

Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to San Jose

Flights: 455
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 10%
Carriers: 6

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on LAX to SJC earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 455 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 2,049 at 91.4% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's LAX to SJC record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 88 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 442 completed flights

Avg delay

61 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.86%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

86.6%

Every carrier on LAX to SJC, 4,429 flights

These figures cover 455 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 17 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

Delta against every carrier on LAX to SJC

Delta flew 455 of the 4,429 flights on LAX to SJC, about 10% of it. Its 86.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 86.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 100.0% to American at 66.7%. Three 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 91.4% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 81.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,822 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on LAX to SJC
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlinesthin sample	1	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
SkyWest Airlines	2,049	91.4%	55 min	0.34%	A+
Delta Air Lines (this page)	455	86.4%	61 min	2.86%	A
Southwest Airlines	1,822	81.5%	48 min	0.66%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	96	80.6%	53 min	3.12%	B−
American Airlinesthin sample	6	66.7%	39 min	0.00%	C+

SkyWest leads Southwest by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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 11 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am84 flights87.3%
8am–11am55 flights90.7%
11am–2pm60 flights89.3%
2pm–5pm143 flights87.9%
5pm–8pm32 flights81.2%
8pm–5am81 flights80.2%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.7% of the time, against 80.2% for the overnight window. That is 11 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 143 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on LAX to SJC through the year

Jan–Mar 2026169 flights85.9%
Apr–Jun 2026286 flights86.7%

Scale runs 75% 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 86.4% on time across 455 flights.

Split by quarter, Delta on LAX to SJC logged 169 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 286 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 86.4% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 93.5% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 72.6%. 21 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 62% of the 3,649 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.

Carrier
62%
Late-arriving aircraft
33%
National Airspace System
5%

The largest share of delay minutes, 62%, 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 2,276 of the 3,649 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,649 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.7% on time here.

Cancellations run at 2.86%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.3% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 308 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 92.3% on time across 454 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. 455 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 Delta on LAX to SJC

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.86% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 442 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures