Route reliability record
LAX→TUS
Los Angeles to Tucson
- Flights
- 2,619
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 451 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 2,619 LAX to TUS flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 2,127 at 83.4% on time.
Best time to fly LAX to TUS: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 86.7%, against 79.7% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,607 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.38%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
83.4% on time across 2,127 flights
These figures cover 2,619 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on LAX to TUS
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 83.4% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 63.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 492 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 2,127 | 83.4% | 84 min | 0.42% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 492 | 63.7% | 50 min | 0.20% | D+ |
The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 20 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 20 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Flights on LAX to TUS
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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Los Angeles to Tucson
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LAX → TUSLos Angeles to Tucson | SkyWest Airlines | 83.0% | 83.4% | 0.42% | 8pm–5am, Tue | OO 3766 09:35 |
| 2. LAX → TUSLos Angeles to Tucson | Southwest Airlines | 63.6% | 63.7% | 0.20% | 2pm–5pm, Wed | — |
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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 28 points, against 20 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am815 flights83.5%
- 11am–2pm61 flights55.7%
- 2pm–5pm858 flights78.8%
- 5pm–8pm702 flights80.3%
- 8pm–5am183 flights72.1%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 55.7% on time against 83.5% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 858 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LAX to TUS 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 TUS, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 83.5% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 55.7%, a wide gap of 27.8 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am83.5%
- 11am–2pm55.7%
- 2–5pm78.8%
- 5–8pm80.3%
- 8pm–5am72.1%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 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.
July is the worst month at 72.5% on time, 14 points below April, the best at 86.2%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. May was the busiest month here, with 234 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.3%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 50% of the 38,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Carrier
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%Extreme weather
- 5%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 38,496 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 19,000 of the 38,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.38%, 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
8.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 451 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 86.4% on time across 2,607 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,619 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 TUS 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. April runs 86.2% on time and July 72.5%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,607 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAX to TUS questions
How often is LAX to TUS delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 20.3% of the 2,619 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LAX to TUS?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 83.4% on time across 2,127 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 63.7%, a gap of 20 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 TUS?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 83.5% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 55.7%, 28 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 July delays on LAX to TUS?
July is the weakest month at 72.5% on time, compared with 86.2% in April. Across the year that is 14 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
- TUS to LAX — the return legseparate record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on LAX to TUS83.4%
- Southwest Airlines on LAX to TUS63.7%
- LAX to SFO, a related route60.1%
- PHX to TUS, a related route81.0%
- LAX to JFK, a related route77.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record83.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record63.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. LAX to TUS and TUS 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.