Carrier route record

ASSFO→LAX

Alaska Airlines · San Francisco to Los Angeles

Flights: 685
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 6%
Carriers: 8

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

Alaska on SFO to LAX sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 45 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 685 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 3,263 at 78.4% on time.

United Airlines is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 78.4% on time across 3,263 flights.

On time

69.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 679 completed flights

Avg delay

47 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.73%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

73.9%

Every carrier on SFO to LAX, 11,015 flights

These figures cover 685 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

Carrier by carrier

Alaska against every carrier on SFO to LAX

Alaska flew 685 of the 11,015 flights on SFO to LAX, about 6% of it. Its 69.7% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of eight carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 78.4% to Envoy at 0.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 78.4% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 61.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,369 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on SFO to LAX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	3,263	78.4%	49 min	0.28%	B+
American Airlinesthin sample	345	76.7%	108 min	0.29%	B+
SkyWest Airlines	2,588	76.6%	60 min	1.04%	B
Delta Air Lines	2,373	73.6%	65 min	1.56%	C
Alaska Airlines (this page)	685	69.7%	47 min	0.73%	C+
Frontier Airlines	391	68.6%	84 min	1.53%	C
Southwest Airlines	1,369	61.8%	60 min	0.58%	D+
Envoy Airthin sample	1	0.0%	35 min	0.00%	F+

The spread between United and Southwest is 17 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 17 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

Departure window

When Alaska runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 38 points, against 17 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am120 flights87.4%
8am–11am189 flights62.6%
11am–2pm100 flights49.5%
2pm–5pm115 flights72.2%
5pm–8pm121 flights79.0%
8pm–5am40 flights65.0%

Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 49.5% on time against 87.4% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 189 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Alaska on SFO to LAX through the year

Oct–Dec 202523 flights—
Jan–Mar 2026126 flights85.7%
Apr–Jun 2026536 flights65.2%

Scale runs 55% to 90%. 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 69.7% on time across 685 flights.

Split by quarter, Alaska on SFO to LAX logged 23 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 126 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 536 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 69.7% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 61.5%. 20 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 62% of the 9,577 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
62%
National Airspace System
22%
Carrier
15%
Extreme weather
1%

62% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 9,577 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 62 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 9,577 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 87.4% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.73%, below the national 1.81% 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 costs

6.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 45 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

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 52.3% on time across 686 flights, 17 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 17 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 685 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 Alaska on SFO to LAX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 685 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 69.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 679 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