Carrier route record

ASSFO→LAX

Alaska Airlines · San Francisco to Los Angeles

Flights: 1,046
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 9%
Carriers: 8

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

Alaska on SFO to LAX draws a C+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is roughly 45 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,046 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 3,335 at 77.7% on time.

United Airlines is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 77.7% on time across 3,335 flights.

On time

66.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,036 completed flights

Avg delay

47 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.86%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

70.9%

Every carrier on SFO to LAX, 11,437 flights

These figures cover 1,046 flights between September 2025 and August 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.

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Carrier by carrier

Alaska against every carrier on SFO to LAX

Alaska flew 1,046 of the 11,437 flights on SFO to LAX, about 9% of it. Its 66.4% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number six of eight carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 77.7% 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 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.

On-time performance by carrier on SFO to LAX
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 (this page)	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.

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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 42 points, against 21 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am169 flights89.3%
8am–11am313 flights60.8%
11am–2pm106 flights47.1%
2pm–5pm228 flights66.8%
5pm–8pm174 flights68.4%
8pm–5am56 flights57.1%

Scale runs 40% to 95%.

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 47.1% on time against 89.3% 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 313 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%
Jul–Sep 2026361 flights60.2%

Scale runs 50% 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 66.4% on time across 1,046 flights.

Alaska on SFO to LAX did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 85.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 60.2%, a swing of 26 points on roughly 349 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 77.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 59.1%, a spread of 19 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Alaska on SFO to LAX runs when it is late

The 348 late arrivals split 140 under half an hour, 133 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 75 an hour or more.

15+ min early92 flights8.9%
Within 15 min596 flights57.5%
15–29 min late140 flights13.5%
30–59 min late133 flights12.8%
1–2 hours late59 flights5.7%
2+ hours late16 flights1.5%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 1,036 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 286 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 29 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 91 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at LAX.

The worst days

Worst days for Alaska on SFO to LAX

The latest arrival of the period was on 20 March 2026, 6 hours 24 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.

The latest arrivals of Alaska on SFO to LAX in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
20 March 2026	6 hours 24 minutes	Carrier
27 July 2026	5 hours 25 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
28 May 2026	4 hours 4 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
7 August 2026	3 hours 39 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
22 July 2026	3 hours 36 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 61% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
61%
National Airspace System
24%
Carrier
15%
Extreme weather
0%
Security
0%

61% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 61 to one. The split is drawn from 16,398 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 89.3% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.86%, 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 costs

7.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 50.9% on time across 1,049 flights, 16 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 16 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,046 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. 1,046 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 66.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,036 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures