Route reliability record
LAX→STS
Los Angeles to Santa Rosa
- Flights
- 715
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 399 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 12 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 715 LAX to STS flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Best time to fly LAX to STS: a 5pm–8pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 93.0%, against 89.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 121 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 690 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.38%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
89.3% on time across 688 flights
These figures cover 715 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on LAX to STS
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 27 | 92.6% | 113 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 688 | 89.3% | 63 min | 2.47% | A |
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 Santa Rosa
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. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LAX → STSLos Angeles to Santa Rosa | SkyWest Airlines | 87.1% | 89.3% | 2.47% | 5pm–8pm, Wed (route) | — |
| 2. BUR → STSBurbank to Santa Rosa | SkyWest Airlines | 86.0% | 88.2% | 2.45% | 2pm–5pm, Sat | — |
| 3. SNA → STSSanta Ana to Santa Rosa | SkyWest Airlines | 80.1% | 80.5% | 0.54% | 5pm–8pm, Wed | OO 3467 11:48 |
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 is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 715 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am331 flights90.1%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm92 flights89.1%
- 5pm–8pm145 flights90.3%
- 8pm–5am147 flights86.9%
Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The time of day barely matters here. The 5pm–8pm window tops the set at 90.3% and 8pm–5am sits at 86.9%, 3 points apart across 715 flights. Pick the departure that suits the trip: whatever is going wrong here is not accumulating over the course of the day. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 331 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LAX to STS 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 STS, the best departure window is 5pm–8pm at 90.3% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 86.9%, a narrow gap of 3.4 points. All US flights leaving 5pm–8pm ran 68.0%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am90.1%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm89.1%
- 5–8pm90.3%
- 8pm–5am86.9%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 13 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.
February is the weak month at 83.7% on time, against 96.4% in August. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. July was the busiest month here, with 85 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 93.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 86.5%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 4,718 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 14%Extreme weather
- 11%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 14% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 4,718 reported delay minutes.
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,718 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations sit at 2.38% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.12%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.1% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 399 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 85.7% on time across 714 flights, 4 points below 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 715 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 STS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 715 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 89.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 690 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAX to STS questions
How often is LAX to STS delayed?
About one flight in nine arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 10.6% of the 715 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is LAX to STS compared with the rest of the country?
89.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 12 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LAX to STS?
The 5pm–8pm departure window is the strongest at 90.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 86.9%, 3 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 February delays on LAX to STS?
February is the weakest month at 83.7% on time, compared with 96.4% in August. Across the year that is 13 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
- STS to LAX — the return legseparate record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- LAX to SFO, a related route60.1%
- SAN to STS, a related route77.5%
- LAX to JFK, a related route77.5%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record92.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record89.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
Direction matters. LAX to STS and STS 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.