Carrier route record

OOSTL→LAX

SkyWest Airlines · St. Louis to Los Angeles

Flights: 354
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 34%
Carriers: 2

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

SkyWest on STL to LAX sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 354 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on STL to LAX from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

75.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 352 completed flights

Avg delay

92 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.56%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.0%

Every carrier on STL to LAX, 1,028 flights

These figures cover 354 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

Carrier by carrier

SkyWest against every carrier on STL to LAX

SkyWest flew 354 of the 1,028 flights on STL to LAX, about 34% of it. Its 75.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 74.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 75.3% to Southwest at 73.4%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on STL to LAX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample	354	75.3%	92 min	0.56%	B+
Southwest Airlines	674	73.4%	50 min	0.00%	C+

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 354 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split SkyWest's STL to LAX record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 75.3% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

SkyWest on STL to LAX through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.June best, October worst

Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 53.3%. June is the strongest month at 93.3%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 40 points. January was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 67.3%. 13 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 80% of the 7,983 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.

Carrier
80%
Extreme weather
12%
National Airspace System
8%
Security
0%

Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 7,983 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 80%, 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 6,401 of the 7,983 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.56%, 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

6.2% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 1,592 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.3% on time across 354 flights, 3 points above 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 3 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 354 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking SkyWest on STL to LAX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 354 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 75.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 352 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures