Route reliability record
SFO→LAX
San Francisco to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 11,437
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 337 mi
- Carriers
- 8
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 11,437 SFO to LAX flights, of which United Airlines flew 3,335 at 77.7% on time.
Best time to fly SFO to LAX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.6% of the time and Saturday flights 77.7%, against 70.9% for the route overall.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the six carriers covered here at 77.7% on time across 3,335 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 11,339 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.82%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
77.7% on time across 3,335 flights
These figures cover 11,000 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SFO to LAX
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 77.7% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 56.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,472 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 3,335 | 77.7% | 46 min | 0.15% | B+ |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 303 | 76.2% | 100 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 2,513 | 72.9% | 61 min | 1.07% | C |
| Delta Air Lines | 2,373 | 69.8% | 63 min | 1.56% | C |
| Frontier Airlines | 394 | 66.5% | 77 min | 1.52% | C |
| Alaska Airlines | 1,046 | 66.4% | 47 min | 0.86% | C+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,472 | 56.7% | 62 min | 0.68% | D+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 1 | 0.0% | 35 min | 0.00% | F+ |
The spread between United and Southwest is 21 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 21 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Flights on SFO 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.
- Delta 159806:0093.4% · 363 flights
- Delta 142108:5589.7% · 352 flights
- Delta 226716:0349.2% · 329 flights
- United 217922:5968.5% · 323 flights
- United 175416:1571.8% · 305 flights
- Delta 171510:4056.1% · 299 flights
- United 116410:3573.7% · 275 flights
- Frontier 285820:2364.6% · 265 flights
- United 189608:5085.2% · 264 flights
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly San Francisco to Los Angeles
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 5 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SJC → LAXSan Jose to Los Angeles | SkyWest Airlines | 91.3% | 91.7% | 0.44% | 5am–8am, Tue | OO 3883 20:05 |
| 2. SJC → LAXSan Jose to Los Angeles | Delta Air Lines | 89.5% | 91.6% | 2.31% | 11am–2pm, Tue | — |
| 3. SJC → SNASan Jose to Santa Ana | Southwest Airlines | 85.9% | 86.6% | 0.78% | 5am–8am, Sat (route) | — |
| 4. OAK → LGBOakland to Long Beach | Southwest Airlines | 85.4% | 85.7% | 0.32% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 5. SJC → LGBSan Jose to Long Beach | Southwest Airlines | 84.3% | 84.4% | 0.16% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 33 points, against 21 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1,931 flights92.6%
- 8am–11am2,242 flights74.7%
- 11am–2pm1,884 flights60.4%
- 2pm–5pm1,794 flights63.9%
- 5pm–8pm2,098 flights70.2%
- 8pm–5am1,488 flights59.1%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 59.1% on time, against 92.6% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 2,242 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SFO 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 SFO to LAX, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.6% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 59.1%, a wide gap of 33.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.6%
- 8–11am74.7%
- 11am–2pm60.4%
- 2–5pm63.9%
- 5–8pm70.2%
- 8pm–5am59.1%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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 57.7% on time, 28 points below January, the best at 86.0%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 1,130 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 77.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 65.7%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 193,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
58% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 193,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 58 to one. The split is drawn from 192,964 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, below the national 1.89% 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
9.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 337 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 60.1% on time across 11,437 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 11,437 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. January runs 86.0% on time and August 57.7%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 11,339 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to LAX questions
How often is SFO to LAX delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 29.1% of the 11,437 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SFO to LAX?
United Airlines leads at 77.7% on time across 3,335 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 56.7%, a gap of 21 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SFO to LAX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 59.1%, 33 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 SFO to LAX?
August is the weakest month at 57.7% on time, compared with 86.0% in January. Across the year that is 28 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 SFO — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- United Airlines on SFO to LAX77.7%
- American Airlines on SFO to LAX76.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on SFO to LAX72.9%
- Delta Air Lines on SFO to LAX69.8%
- Frontier Airlines on SFO to LAX66.5%
- Alaska Airlines on SFO to LAX66.4%
- Southwest Airlines on SFO to LAX56.7%
- SFO to SEA, a related route72.3%
- JFK to LAX, a related route75.4%
- SFO to JFK, a related route78.0%
- United Airlines on-time record77.7%
- American Airlines on-time record76.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record72.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. SFO to LAX and LAX to SFO 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.