Carrier route record
OOSFO→LAX
SkyWest Airlines · San Francisco to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 2,588
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 23%
- Carriers
- 8
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on SFO to LAX lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,588 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
76.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,560 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.04%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.9%
Every carrier on SFO to LAX, 11,015 flights
These figures cover 2,588 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% 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
SkyWest against every carrier on SFO to LAX
SkyWest flew 2,588 of the 11,015 flights on SFO to LAX, about 23% of it. Its 76.6% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three 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 (this page) | 2,588 | 76.6% | 60 min | 1.04% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 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.
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 37 points, against 17 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am394 flights95.9%
- 8am–11am692 flights80.0%
- 11am–2pm552 flights63.5%
- 2pm–5pm352 flights79.9%
- 5pm–8pm406 flights75.4%
- 8pm–5am192 flights59.0%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 59.0% 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 692 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on SFO to LAX through the year
June is the worst month at 59.7% on time, 30 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 82.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 71.8%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 36,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%National Airspace System
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
35% 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 36,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 35,555 reported delay minutes.
40% 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 14,000 minutes out of 36,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.04% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.04%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.0% 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 72.0% on time across 2,593 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,588 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 June 59.7%, a swing of 30 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,560 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to LAX, every carrier
- SkyWest on LAX to SFO, the return leg
- United Airlines on SFO to LAX78.4%
- American Airlines on SFO to LAX76.7%
- Delta Air Lines on SFO to LAX73.6%
- Alaska Airlines on SFO to LAX69.7%
- Frontier Airlines on SFO to LAX68.6%
- Southwest Airlines on SFO to LAX61.8%
- SkyWest Airlines 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.