Carrier route record
OOSJC→LAX
SkyWest Airlines · San Jose to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 2,053
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 46%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 15 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 2,053 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 454 at 92.3% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's SJC to LAX record is 15 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 150 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
92.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,043 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.39%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
86.6%
Every carrier on SJC to LAX, 4,433 flights
These figures cover 2,053 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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.
Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on SJC to LAX
SkyWest flew 2,053 of the 4,433 flights on SJC to LAX, about 46% of it. Its 92.6% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 86.6%. 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 92.3% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 78.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,823 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) | 2,053 | 92.6% | 73 min | 0.39% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 454 | 92.3% | 50 min | 3.08% | A− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 96 | 82.6% | 56 min | 4.17% | B− |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,823 | 78.9% | 47 min | 0.44% | B+ |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 6 | 66.7% | 29 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Delta Air Lines cancels 3.1% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on SJC to LAX
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 2,053 flights.
- 5am–8am376 flights96.5%
- 8am–11am285 flights91.8%
- 11am–2pm264 flights94.3%
- 2pm–5pm532 flights90.6%
- 5pm–8pm285 flights89.0%
- 8pm–5am311 flights93.6%
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 96.5% on time for the 5am–8am window against 89.0% for 5pm–8pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 532 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, Thursday is the strongest day at 95.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 88.6%. 6 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 67% of the 11,000 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%Carrier
- 17%Extreme weather
- 11%National Airspace System
- 6%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 17% 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 2.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 11,091 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 67%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 7,415 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.39%, below the national 1.81% 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 2.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 91.4% on time across 2,049 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 2,053 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. 2,043 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 LAX92.3%
- Southwest Airlines on SJC to LAX78.9%
- 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.