Route reliability record
SAN→LAX
San Diego to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 2,452
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 109 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 a little over an hour. That rests on 2,452 SAN to LAX flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly SAN to LAX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 93.2%, against 87.4% 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 101 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,429 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.94%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
87.2% on time across 2,163 flights
These figures cover 2,452 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SAN 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 289 | 88.9% | 77 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 2,163 | 87.2% | 70 min | 1.06% | A |
Flight by flight
Flights on SAN 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 16 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am728 flights93.8%
- 8am–11am346 flights88.0%
- 11am–2pm345 flights88.2%
- 2pm–5pm384 flights77.8%
- 5pm–8pm255 flights85.4%
- 8pm–5am394 flights85.0%
Scale runs 70% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.8% of the time, against 77.8% for the afternoon window. That is 16 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 728 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SAN 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 SAN to LAX, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.8% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 77.8%, a wide gap of 16.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.8%
- 8–11am88.0%
- 11am–2pm88.2%
- 2–5pm77.8%
- 5–8pm85.4%
- 8pm–5am85.0%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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.
August is the worst month at 77.3% on time, 18 points below April, the best at 95.7%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 224 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 93.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 81.7%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 51% of the 22,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 21,628 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 11,000 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.94% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.9% 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 109 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.2% on time across 2,452 flights, 4 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,452 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. April runs 95.7% on time and August 77.3%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 2,429 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SAN to LAX questions
How often is SAN 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 12.6% of the 2,452 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is SAN to LAX compared with the rest of the country?
87.4% 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 SAN to LAX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.8% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 77.8%, 16 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 SAN to LAX?
August is the weakest month at 77.3% on time, compared with 95.7% in April. Across the year that is 18 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 SAN — the return legseparate record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- United Airlines on SAN to LAX88.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on SAN to LAX87.2%
- SAN to SFO, a related route59.5%
- SFO to LAX, a related route70.9%
- SAN to DEN, a related route78.4%
- United Airlines on-time record88.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record87.2%
- 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. SAN to LAX and LAX to SAN 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.