Route reliability record
TUS→LAX
Tucson to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 2,607
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 451 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 9 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 2,607 TUS to LAX flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 2,128 at 87.1% on time.
Best time to fly TUS to LAX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 88.7%, against 86.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 91 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,596 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.42%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
87.1% on time across 2,128 flights
These figures cover 2,607 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on TUS to LAX
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 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 | 2,128 | 87.1% | 81 min | 0.42% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 479 | 83.4% | 50 min | 0.42% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 87.1%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on TUS to LAX
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Tucson to Los Angeles
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. TUS → LAXTucson to Los Angeles | SkyWest Airlines | 86.7% | 87.1% | 0.42% | 5am–8am, Fri | OO 3502 06:20 |
| 2. TUS → LAXTucson to Los Angeles | Southwest Airlines | 83.0% | 83.4% | 0.42% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 38 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am605 flights93.2%
- 8am–11am398 flights88.4%
- 11am–2pm749 flights86.7%
- 2pm–5pm235 flights85.5%
- 5pm–8pm566 flights80.8%
- 8pm–5am54 flights55.6%
Scale runs 45% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.6% on time, against 93.2% 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 749 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter TUS to LAX by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On TUS to LAX, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.2% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 55.6%, a wide gap of 37.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.2%
- 8–11am88.4%
- 11am–2pm86.7%
- 2–5pm85.5%
- 5–8pm80.8%
- 8pm–5am55.6%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 2,607 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.2%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 52% of the 26,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%Extreme weather
- 6%National Airspace System
- 3%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 14,000 of the 26,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 26,035 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 93.2% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.42%, 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 actually costs
5.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, 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 79.7% on time across 2,619 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,607 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 LAX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: avoid the 8pm–5am departure. It runs 55.6% on time against 93.2% 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. 2,596 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 arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 13.6% of the 2,607 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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 87.1% on time across 2,128 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 83.4%, a gap of 4 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 93.2% 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 TUS to LAX87.1%
- Southwest Airlines on TUS to LAX83.4%
- TUS to PHX, a related route83.6%
- SFO to LAX, a related route70.9%
- TUS to DEN, a related route83.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record87.1%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record83.4%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 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.
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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.