Route reliability record
MCI→LAX
Kansas City to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 1,290
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,363 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,290 MCI to LAX flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 619 at 92.2% on time.
Best time to fly MCI to LAX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 88.1%, against 82.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 44 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,280 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.70%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
92.2% on time across 619 flights
These figures cover 1,290 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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
Which airline is most reliable on MCI to LAX
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 92.2% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 66.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 499 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 85 | 92.9% | 66 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 619 | 92.2% | 77 min | 0.97% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 87 | 88.4% | 90 min | 1.15% | A |
| Southwest Airlines | 499 | 66.6% | 51 min | 0.40% | C+ |
The spread between Delta and Southwest is 26 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 26 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Flights on MCI to LAX
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Kansas City to Los Angeles
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. MCI → LAXKansas City to Los Angeles | Delta Air Lines | 91.3% | 92.2% | 0.97% | 5am–8am, Sat | DL 2337 07:00 |
| 2. MCI → LAXKansas City to Los Angeles | Southwest Airlines | 66.3% | 66.6% | 0.40% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 39 points, against 26 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am382 flights92.6%
- 8am–11am49 flights83.3%
- 11am–2pm30 flights70.0%
- 2pm–5pm565 flights87.0%
- 5pm–8pm126 flights61.9%
- 8pm–5am138 flights53.6%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 53.6% on time, against 92.6% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 565 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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.
December is the weak month at 70.5% on time, against 90.9% in January. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 150 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.9%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 13,000 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 13,484 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.70%, below the national 1.81% 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
5.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,363 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 83.7% on time across 1,288 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,290 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 LAX 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. January runs 90.9% on time and December 70.5%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,280 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCI to LAX questions
How often is MCI to LAX delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.0% of the 1,290 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MCI to LAX?
Delta Air Lines leads at 92.2% on time across 619 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 66.6%, a gap of 26 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 MCI to LAX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 53.6%, 39 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 December delays on MCI to LAX?
December is the weakest month at 70.5% on time, compared with 90.9% in January. Across the year that is 20 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
- LAX to MCI — the return legseparate record
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on MCI to LAX92.2%
- Southwest Airlines on MCI to LAX66.6%
- MCI to DEN, a related route76.1%
- SFO to LAX, a related route73.9%
- MCI to ORD, a related route74.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record92.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record92.2%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record88.4%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. MCI to LAX and LAX to MCI are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed MCI to LAX’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.