Carrier route record
OOSJC→LAX
SkyWest Airlines · San Jose to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 1,809
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 40%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on SJC to LAX earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 14 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,809 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 649 at 91.6% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's SJC to LAX record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 144 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,799 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.44%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
85.0%
Every carrier on SJC to LAX, 4,470 flights
These figures cover 1,809 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on SJC to LAX
SkyWest flew 1,809 of the 4,470 flights on SJC to LAX, about 40% of it. Its 91.7% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 85.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 100.0% to American at 66.7%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 91.6% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 76.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,867 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 1,809 | 91.7% | 76 min | 0.44% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 649 | 91.6% | 57 min | 2.31% | A |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,867 | 76.8% | 47 min | 0.64% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 138 | 75.8% | 43 min | 4.35% | B− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 6 | 66.7% | 29 min | 0.00% | C+ |
The spread between Delta and Southwest is 15 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 15 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on SJC to LAX
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Departure window
When SkyWest runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 1,809 flights.
- 5am–8am302 flights95.6%
- 8am–11am284 flights91.8%
- 11am–2pm140 flights92.9%
- 2pm–5pm582 flights91.4%
- 5pm–8pm215 flights86.9%
- 8pm–5am286 flights91.3%
Scale runs 80% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.6% of the time, against 86.9% for the evening window. That is 9 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 582 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on SJC to LAX through the year
December is the weak month at 85.1% on time, against 97.4% in April. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. September was the busiest month here, with 270 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 95.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 89.6%, a spread of 6 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on SJC to LAX runs when it is late
SkyWest on SJC to LAX often beats the schedule: 837 of 1,799 completed flights, 47%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 149 late arrivals split 60 under half an hour, 37 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 52 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early837 flights46.5%
- Within 15 min813 flights45.2%
- 15–29 min late60 flights3.3%
- 30–59 min late37 flights2.1%
- 1–2 hours late26 flights1.4%
- 2+ hours late26 flights1.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,799 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
18 of 126 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. 41 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for SkyWest on SJC to LAX
The latest arrival of the period was on 26 December 2025, 15 hours 3 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in December 2025.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 26 December 2025 | 15 hours 3 minutes | Carrier |
| 12 May 2026 | 7 hours 49 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 September 2025 | 5 hours 24 minutes | Carrier |
| 25 December 2025 | 5 hours 14 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 December 2025 | 5 hours 5 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 67% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 67%Carrier
- 16%Extreme weather
- 11%National Airspace System
- 6%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 16% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 11,336 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 67%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 7,606 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.44%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 308 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 runs 90.7% on time across 1,805 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,809 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 SJC to LAX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 97.4% on time and December 85.1%, a swing of 12 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,799 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SJC to LAX, every carrier
- SkyWest on LAX to SJC, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on SJC to LAX91.6%
- Southwest Airlines on SJC to LAX76.8%
- Frontier Airlines on SJC to LAX75.8%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International (SJC) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.