Route reliability record
TUS→LAX
Tucson to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 2,581
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 451 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns a 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 a little over an hour. That rests on 2,581 flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 2,115 at 86.5% on time.
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 83 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,570 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.43%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
86.5% on time across 2,115 flights
These figures cover 2,581 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 TUS to LAX
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 2,115 | 86.5% | 85 min | 0.43% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 466 | 83.2% | 45 min | 0.43% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 86.5%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 38 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am589 flights93.5%
- 8am–11am458 flights87.1%
- 11am–2pm695 flights86.2%
- 2pm–5pm229 flights81.7%
- 5pm–8pm556 flights81.0%
- 8pm–5am54 flights55.6%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.6% on time, against 93.5% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 695 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 2,581 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
February is the weak month at 79.1% on time, against 90.7% 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. May was the busiest month here, with 234 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 88.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.0%. 8 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. Carrier accounts for 57% of the 28,000 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.
- 57%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%Extreme weather
- 5%National Airspace System
- 3%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 57%, 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 16,000 of the 28,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 27,805 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.43%, 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
5.7% 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 are the a little over an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 451 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 80.4% on time across 2,580 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,581 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 this route
Put together: avoid the 8pm–5am departure. It runs 55.6% on time against 93.5% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 38 points is the largest single thing you control here. SkyWest Airlines is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 2,570 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TUS to LAX questions
How often is TUS to LAX delayed?
About one flight in seven arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.1% of the 2,581 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on TUS to LAX?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 86.5% on time across 2,115 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 83.2%, a gap of 3 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on TUS to LAX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 55.6%, 38 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 February delays on TUS to LAX?
February is the weakest month at 79.1% on time, compared with 90.7% in April. Across the year that is 12 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
- LAX to TUS — the return legseparate record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record86.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record83.2%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. TUS to LAX and LAX to TUS are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.