Route reliability record
RNO→LAX
Reno to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 2,472
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 390 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 2,472 RNO to LAX flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly RNO to LAX: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 91.7%, against 87.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 99 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,460 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.49%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
88.8% on time across 1,974 flights
These figures cover 2,472 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 RNO 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 | 1,974 | 88.8% | 64 min | 0.30% | A+ |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 177 | 84.2% | 45 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 321 | 79.4% | 56 min | 1.87% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on RNO 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.
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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–8am620 flights89.8%
- 8am–11am609 flights93.0%
- 11am–2pm324 flights86.9%
- 2pm–5pm235 flights85.0%
- 5pm–8pm625 flights80.9%
- 8pm–5am59 flights78.0%
Scale runs 70% to 100%.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 93.0% of the time, against 78.0% for the overnight window. That is 15 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 625 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter RNO 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 RNO to LAX, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 93.0% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 78.0%, a wide gap of 15.0 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am89.8%
- 8–11am93.0%
- 11am–2pm86.9%
- 2–5pm85.0%
- 5–8pm80.9%
- 8pm–5am78.0%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 13 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.
February is the weak month at 81.5% on time, against 94.4% in September. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 245 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 83.4%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 50% of the 19,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Carrier
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%National Airspace System
- 15%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 19,126 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 9,473 of the 19,000 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.4% 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 390 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 runs 89.1% on time across 2,470 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 2,472 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. September runs 94.4% on time and February 81.5%, a swing of 13 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of February before you think about anything else. 2,460 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RNO to LAX questions
How often is RNO to LAX delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 12.8% of the 2,472 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is RNO to LAX compared with the rest of the country?
87.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 10 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on RNO to LAX?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 93.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 78.0%, 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 February delays on RNO to LAX?
February is the weakest month at 81.5% on time, compared with 94.4% in September. Across the year that is 13 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 RNO — the return legseparate record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on RNO to LAX88.8%
- United Airlines on RNO to LAX84.2%
- Southwest Airlines on RNO to LAX79.4%
- RNO to LAS, a related route81.4%
- SFO to LAX, a related route70.9%
- RNO to DEN, a related route86.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record88.8%
- United Airlines on-time record84.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record79.4%
- 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. RNO to LAX and LAX to RNO 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.