Carrier route record

UASAN→LAX

United Airlines · San Diego to Los Angeles

Flights: 187
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 8%
Carriers: 2

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

United 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 14 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 187 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, United's SAN to LAX record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 144 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

92.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 187 completed flights

Avg delay

63 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

89.2%

Every carrier on SAN to LAX, 2,441 flights

These figures cover 187 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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

United against every carrier on SAN to LAX

United flew 187 of the 2,441 flights on SAN to LAX, about 8% of it. Its 92.0% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 89.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 92.0% to SkyWest at 89.0%.

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 Airlines (this page)thin sample	187	92.0%	63 min	0.00%	A+
SkyWest Airlines	2,254	89.0%	77 min	1.02%	A

Departure window

When United runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 17 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–8am151 flights94.7%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm4 flights—
8pm–5am32 flights78.1%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.7% of the time, against 78.1% for the overnight window. That is 17 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 151 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on SAN to LAX through the year

Jul–Sep 20256 flights—
Oct–Dec 202510 flights—
Jan–Mar 202660 flights93.3%
Apr–Jun 2026111 flights92.8%

Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 92.0% on time across 187 flights.

Split by quarter, United on SAN to LAX logged 6 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 10 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 60 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 111 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 92.0% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why United runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 60% of the 941 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
60%
National Airspace System
24%
Late-arriving aircraft
16%

The largest share of delay minutes, 60%, 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 569 of the 941 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 941 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.1% 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 89.4% on time across 188 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 187 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking United on SAN to LAX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 187 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 92.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 187 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