Carrier route record
DLSFO→LAX
Delta Air Lines · San Francisco to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 2,373
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 22%
- Carriers
- 8
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on SFO to LAX sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,373 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.
Key figures
On time
73.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,335 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.56%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.9%
Every carrier on SFO to LAX, 11,015 flights
These figures cover 2,373 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on SFO to LAX
Delta flew 2,373 of the 11,015 flights on SFO to LAX, about 22% of it. Its 73.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 73.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four 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.
| 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 (this page) | 2,373 | 73.6% | 65 min | 1.56% | C |
| Alaska Airlines | 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.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on SFO to LAX
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 39 points, against 17 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am361 flights94.7%
- 8am–11am432 flights84.8%
- 11am–2pm557 flights65.2%
- 2pm–5pm365 flights55.7%
- 5pm–8pm407 flights71.3%
- 8pm–5am251 flights72.1%
Scale runs 45% 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 55.7% for the afternoon window. That is 39 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 557 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on SFO to LAX through the year
Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 59.6%. January is the strongest month at 88.8%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 29 points. May was the busiest month here, with 211 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.5% on time and Thursday the weakest at 69.0%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 67% of the 40,000 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.
- 67%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
- 0%Extreme weather
67% 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 40,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 67 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 40,344 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 94.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.56% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.04%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.8% 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 about an hour, 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 65.2% on time across 2,373 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,373 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 Delta on SFO to LAX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 88.8% on time and April 59.6%, a swing of 29 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of April before you think about anything else. 2,335 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to LAX, every carrier
- Delta on LAX to SFO, the return leg
- United Airlines on SFO to LAX78.4%
- American Airlines on SFO to LAX76.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on SFO to LAX76.6%
- Alaska Airlines on SFO to LAX69.7%
- Frontier Airlines on SFO to LAX68.6%
- Southwest Airlines on SFO to LAX61.8%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.