Carrier route record
DLMCI→LAX
Delta Air Lines · Kansas City to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 616
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 46%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on MCI to LAX 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 15 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 616 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's MCI to LAX record is 15 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 145 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 612 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.49%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
82.5%
Every carrier on MCI to LAX, 1,337 flights
These figures cover 616 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 14 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
Delta against every carrier on MCI to LAX
Delta flew 616 of the 1,337 flights on MCI to LAX, about 46% of it. Its 91.8% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 94.3% to Southwest at 69.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 141 | 94.3% | 58 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 616 | 91.8% | 83 min | 0.49% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 32 | 81.2% | 91 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 548 | 69.0% | 51 min | 0.55% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on MCI to LAX
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.
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
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 616 flights.
- 5am–8am285 flights93.3%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm331 flights90.6%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5am–8am window is the strongest at 93.3% on time. The full set of windows spans 3 points.
Across the year
Delta on MCI to LAX through the year
December is the weak month at 81.2% on time, against 98.4% in October. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 61 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 97.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 87.2%, a spread of 10 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on MCI to LAX runs when it is late
Delta on MCI to LAX often beats the schedule: 293 of 612 completed flights, 48%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 28 of the 50 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 17 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early293 flights47.9%
- Within 15 min269 flights44.0%
- 15–29 min late28 flights4.6%
- 30–59 min late5 flights0.8%
- 1–2 hours late5 flights0.8%
- 2+ hours late12 flights2.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 612 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
13 of 50 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 26% of them. 13 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on MCI to LAX
The latest arrival of the period was on 19 August 2026, 7 hours 19 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 19 August 2026 | 7 hours 19 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 December 2025 | 6 hours 1 minute | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 4 November 2025 | 5 hours 8 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 January 2026 | 4 hours 50 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 23 September 2025 | 4 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 45% of the 4,147 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Carrier
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%Extreme weather
- 8%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,147 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 4,147 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,862 of the 4,147 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.49%, 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 costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.8% 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.
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.
The return leg runs 89.7% on time across 616 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 616 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 MCI to LAX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 616 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 91.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 612 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCI to LAX, every carrier
- Delta on LAX to MCI, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on MCI to LAX94.3%
- Southwest Airlines on MCI to LAX69.0%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.