Carrier route record

OOSAN→LAX

SkyWest Airlines · San Diego to Los Angeles

Flights: 2,254
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 92%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on SAN to LAX 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 11 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 2,254 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's SAN to LAX record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 114 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

89.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,231 completed flights

Avg delay

77 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.02%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

89.2%

Every carrier on SAN to LAX, 2,441 flights

These figures cover 2,254 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

SkyWest against every carrier on SAN to LAX

SkyWest flew 2,254 of the 2,441 flights on SAN to LAX, most of the route. Its 89.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 89.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 92.0% to SkyWest at 89.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on SAN to LAX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlinesthin sample	187	92.0%	63 min	0.00%	A+
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	2,254	89.0%	77 min	1.02%	A

Flight by flight

SkyWest flight numbers on SAN to LAX

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 12 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–8am577 flights93.4%
8am–11am364 flights89.2%
11am–2pm348 flights88.9%
2pm–5pm358 flights81.0%
5pm–8pm290 flights90.6%
8pm–5am317 flights88.4%

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 93.4% of the time, against 81.0% for the afternoon window. That is 12 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 577 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on SAN to LAX through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.April best, December worst

December is the weak month at 79.0% on time, against 97.5% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 209 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 93.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 83.1%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 56% of the 19,000 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.

Carrier
56%
National Airspace System
16%
Late-arriving aircraft
16%
Extreme weather
11%

Extreme weather accounts for 11% 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 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 19,049 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 56%, 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 19,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.02% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.8% 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 86.5% on time across 2,253 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 2,254 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 SkyWest on SAN to LAX

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 97.5% on time and December 79.0%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,231 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures