Route reliability record
RNO→LAX
Reno to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 2,494
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 390 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route earns a 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 2,494 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 97 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,482 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.48%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
88.8% on time across 2,037 flights
These figures cover 2,494 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 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 | 2,037 | 88.8% | 69 min | 0.29% | A+ |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 114 | 86.0% | 41 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 343 | 78.6% | 57 min | 1.75% | B |
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 11 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am641 flights90.6%
- 8am–11am501 flights91.9%
- 11am–2pm438 flights87.8%
- 2pm–5pm179 flights86.0%
- 5pm–8pm629 flights80.9%
- 8pm–5am106 flights84.0%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.9% of the time, against 80.9% for the evening window. That is 11 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 641 flights scheduled in it.
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 251 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 83.3%. 7 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. Carrier accounts for 48% of the 20,000 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.
- 48%Carrier
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%Extreme weather
- 13%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 20,356 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 9,797 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.48%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 88.1% on time across 2,494 flights, within about a point 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 2,494 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.
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. 2,482 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 arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 12.7% of the 2,494 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is RNO to LAX compared with the rest of the country?
87.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, 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 91.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 80.9%, 11 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-time record88.8%
- United Airlines on-time record86.0%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record78.6%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 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.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.