Carrier route record

OOSFO→LAX

SkyWest Airlines · San Francisco to Los Angeles

Flights: 2,513
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 22%
Carriers: 8

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

SkyWest 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, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,513 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

72.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,485 completed flights

Avg delay

61 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.07%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

70.9%

Every carrier on SFO to LAX, 11,437 flights

These figures cover 2,513 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Carrier by carrier

SkyWest against every carrier on SFO to LAX

SkyWest flew 2,513 of the 11,437 flights on SFO to LAX, about 22% of it. Its 72.9% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three 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 (this page)	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.

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Departure window

When SkyWest 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–8am418 flights95.9%
8am–11am623 flights74.8%
11am–2pm566 flights58.9%
2pm–5pm346 flights72.9%
5pm–8pm347 flights76.4%
8pm–5am213 flights53.6%

Scale runs 45% to 100%.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 53.6% on time, against 95.9% 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 623 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on SFO to LAX through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.January best, August worst

August is the worst month at 55.1% on time, 34 points below January, the best at 89.2%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 292 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 77.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 66.3%, a spread of 11 points.

Arrival by arrival

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

The 673 late arrivals split 188 under half an hour, 251 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 234 an hour or more.

15+ min early509 flights20.5%
Within 15 min1,303 flights52.4%
15–29 min late188 flights7.6%
30–59 min late251 flights10.1%
1–2 hours late178 flights7.2%
2+ hours late56 flights2.3%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 2,485 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 638 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 61 made it up before arrival. 96 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for SkyWest on SFO to LAX

The latest arrival of the period was on 24 May 2026, 18 hours 31 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of SkyWest on SFO to LAX in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
24 May 2026	18 hours 31 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
16 March 2026	6 hours 6 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
6 May 2026	5 hours 33 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
3 January 2026	5 hours 27 minutes	National Airspace System
20 February 2026	5 hours 23 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

National Airspace System accounts for 44% of the 41,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

National Airspace System
44%
Late-arriving aircraft
34%
Carrier
18%
Extreme weather
4%

34% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 41,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. The split is drawn from 41,089 reported delay minutes.

44% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 18,000 minutes out of 41,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations sit at 1.07% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.04%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

9.4% 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 66.6% on time across 2,515 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 2,513 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 SkyWest on SFO to LAX

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 89.2% on time and August 55.1%, a swing of 34 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 2,485 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