Route reliability record
SAN→LAX
San Diego to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 2,441
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 109 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 12 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 2,441 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 116 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,418 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.94%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
89.0% on time across 2,254 flights
These figures cover 2,441 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 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 | 187 | 92.0% | 63 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 2,254 | 89.0% | 77 min | 1.02% | A |
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 13 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–8am728 flights93.7%
- 8am–11am364 flights89.2%
- 11am–2pm348 flights88.9%
- 2pm–5pm358 flights81.0%
- 5pm–8pm294 flights90.8%
- 8pm–5am349 flights87.4%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.7% of the time, against 81.0% for the afternoon window. That is 13 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.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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.
December is the weak month at 79.1% on time, against 95.7% in April. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 224 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 93.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 83.5%. 10 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 57% 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.
- 57%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 16%Late-arriving aircraft
- 11%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 57%, 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 11,000 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 19,990 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 0.94% against a national 1.81%, 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 3.6% 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 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 runs 86.7% on time across 2,441 flights, within 3 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 2,441 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. April runs 95.7% on time and December 79.1%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,418 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 nine arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 10.8% of the 2,441 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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?
89.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 12 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 93.7% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 81.0%, 13 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 December delays on SAN to LAX?
December is the weakest month at 79.1% on time, compared with 95.7% in April. Across the year that is 17 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-time record92.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record89.0%
- 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. 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.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.