Carrier route record
WNMCI→LAX
Southwest Airlines · Kansas City to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 548
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 41%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on MCI to LAX sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 548 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Southwest on MCI to LAX runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 83 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 545 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
82.5%
Every carrier on MCI to LAX, 1,337 flights
These figures cover 548 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on MCI to LAX
Southwest flew 548 of the 1,337 flights on MCI to LAX, about 41% of it. Its 69.0% on time is 14 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 82.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last 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 | 616 | 91.8% | 83 min | 0.49% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 32 | 81.2% | 91 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 548 | 69.0% | 51 min | 0.55% | C+ |
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 Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 35 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am111 flights89.0%
- 8am–11am43 flights81.0%
- 11am–2pm34 flights73.5%
- 2pm–5pm88 flights76.1%
- 5pm–8pm113 flights59.3%
- 8pm–5am159 flights54.1%
Scale runs 45% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 54.1% on time, against 89.0% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 159 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on MCI to LAX through the year
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 56.4%. January is the strongest month at 85.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 29 points. June was the busiest month here, with 66 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.5%, a spread of 18 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on MCI to LAX runs when it is late
The 169 late arrivals split 59 under half an hour, 62 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 48 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early84 flights15.4%
- Within 15 min292 flights53.6%
- 15–29 min late59 flights10.8%
- 30–59 min late62 flights11.4%
- 1–2 hours late37 flights6.8%
- 2+ hours late11 flights2.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 545 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
57 of 214 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 27% of them. 12 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on MCI to LAX
The latest arrival of the period was on 1 June 2026, 4 hours 47 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 1 June 2026 | 4 hours 47 minutes | Carrier |
| 1 December 2025 | 3 hours 23 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 13 August 2026 | 3 hours 21 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 13 December 2025 | 2 hours 42 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 July 2026 | 2 hours 41 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 8,645 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,645 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 25 to one. The split is drawn from 8,645 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 89.0% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, 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
8.8% 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 roughly 50 minutes, 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.
The return leg runs 71.2% on time across 560 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. 548 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 Southwest on MCI to LAX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 548 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 69.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 545 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCI to LAX, every carrier
- Southwest on LAX to MCI, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on MCI to LAX94.3%
- Delta Air Lines on MCI to LAX91.8%
- Southwest Airlines 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
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.