Route reliability record
MRY→LAX
Monterey to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 839
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 266 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 839 MRY to LAX flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly MRY to LAX: a 5pm–8pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 92.4%, against 86.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 93 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 834 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.60%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
86.8% on time across 717 flights
These figures cover 839 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 MRY to LAX
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 Airlines | 717 | 86.8% | 64 min | 0.70% | A+ |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 122 | 85.2% | 77 min | 0.00% | 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 Monterey to Los Angeles
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. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SJC → LAXSan Jose to Los Angeles | SkyWest Airlines | 91.3% | 91.7% | 0.44% | 5am–8am, Tue | OO 3883 20:05 |
| 2. SJC → LAXSan Jose to Los Angeles | Delta Air Lines | 89.5% | 91.6% | 2.31% | 11am–2pm, Tue | — |
| 3. MRY → LAXMonterey to Los Angeles | SkyWest Airlines | 86.2% | 86.8% | 0.70% | 5pm–8pm, Wed | — |
| 4. SJC → SNASan Jose to Santa Ana | Southwest Airlines | 85.9% | 86.6% | 0.78% | 5am–8am, Sat (route) | — |
| 5. SJC → LGBSan Jose to Long Beach | Southwest Airlines | 84.3% | 84.4% | 0.16% | 5am–8am, 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 15 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am307 flights86.6%
- 8am–11am176 flights79.3%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm237 flights88.2%
- 5pm–8pm118 flights93.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 93.9% on time. The full set of windows spans 15 points.
Explore
Filter MRY to LAX 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 MRY to LAX, the best departure window is 5pm–8pm at 93.9% on time and the worst is 8am–11am at 79.3%, a wide gap of 14.6 points. All US flights leaving 5pm–8pm ran 68.0%.
- 5–8am86.6%
- 8–11am79.3%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm88.2%
- 5–8pm93.9%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 839 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
August is the worst month at 80.3% on time, 11 points below April, the best at 91.1%. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 88 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 82.1%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 54% of the 7,366 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Carrier
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 54%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,970 of the 7,366 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,366 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.60%, 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
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 266 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 runs 88.9% on time across 842 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. 839 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 LAX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 839 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 86.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 834 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MRY to LAX questions
How often is MRY to LAX delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 13.4% of the 839 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MRY to LAX compared with the rest of the country?
86.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 9 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MRY to LAX?
The 5pm–8pm departure window is the strongest at 93.9% on time. The 8am–11am window is the weakest at 79.3%, 15 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 August delays on MRY to LAX?
August is the weakest month at 80.3% on time, compared with 91.1% in April. Across the year that is 11 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 MRY — the return legseparate record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on MRY to LAX86.8%
- United Airlines on MRY to LAX85.2%
- MRY to PHX, a related route82.7%
- SFO to LAX, a related route70.9%
- MRY to SFO, a related route58.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record86.8%
- United Airlines on-time record85.2%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. MRY to LAX and LAX to MRY 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.