Route reliability record
SJC→LGB
San Jose to Long Beach
- Flights
- 1,229
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 324 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 50 minutes. That rests on 1,229 SJC to LGB flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly SJC to LGB: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 91.9%, against 85.5% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 79 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,227 completed flights
Avg delay
48 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.16%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
85.5% on time across 1,229 flights
These figures cover 1,229 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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
Which airline is most reliable on SJC to LGB
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,229 | 85.5% | 48 min | 0.16% | A+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly San Jose to Long Beach
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 5 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SJC → LAXSan Jose to Los Angeles | SkyWest Airlines | 92.2% | 92.6% | 0.39% | 5am–8am, Thu | OO 3979 07:00 |
| 2. SJC → LAXSan Jose to Los Angeles | Delta Air Lines | 89.5% | 92.3% | 3.08% | 11am–2pm, Sun | — |
| 3. MRY → LAXMonterey to Los Angeles | SkyWest Airlines | 87.2% | 87.8% | 0.63% | 5pm–8pm, Tue (route) | OO 4717 07:00 |
| 4. SJC → SNASan Jose to Santa Ana | Southwest Airlines | 86.3% | 87.0% | 0.83% | 5am–8am, Sat (route) | — |
| 5. OAK → LGBOakland to Long Beach | Southwest Airlines | 86.1% | 86.3% | 0.25% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 27 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am203 flights95.6%
- 8am–11am276 flights93.8%
- 11am–2pm211 flights91.4%
- 2pm–5pm220 flights78.6%
- 5pm–8pm271 flights73.3%
- 8pm–5am48 flights68.8%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.6% of the time, against 68.8% for the overnight window. That is 27 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 276 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 76.0%. January is the strongest month at 94.6%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 19 points. May was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.5%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 68% of the 8,608 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.
- 68%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
68% 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 8,608 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 68 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 8,608 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 95.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.16%, 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.0% 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 324 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 86.7% on time across 1,229 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 1,229 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in LGB after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 94.6% on time and October 76.0%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of October before you think about anything else. 1,227 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SJC to LGB questions
How often is SJC to LGB delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.5% of the 1,229 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is SJC to LGB compared with the rest of the country?
85.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SJC to LGB?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 68.8%, 27 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are October delays on SJC to LGB?
October is the weakest month at 76.0% on time, compared with 94.6% in January. Across the year that is 19 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- LGB to SJC — the return legseparate record
- Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International (SJC) delay statistics
- SJC to SAN, a related route72.4%
- LAS to LGB, a related route77.7%
- SJC to LAX, a related route86.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record85.5%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. SJC to LGB and LGB to SJC are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.