The Best (and Worst) Times to Fly Out of Los Angeles — Backed by Data
We analysed 24,600 flights across LAX, BUR, LGB and SNA last June. The single clearest finding: fly before 9am or accept the consequences. Here's the full breakdown.
Photo by Artur Tumasjan on Unsplash
Los Angeles has four commercial airports within 40 miles of each other. You'd think that kind of competition would keep them honest. You'd be mostly wrong.
We pulled U.S. Department of Transportation flight performance data for June 2025 — 24,617 departures across LAX, Burbank (BUR), Long Beach (LGB), and Orange County/Santa Ana (SNA) — to find out when to fly, which airport behaves best, and which carriers you should think twice about.
The headline finding: fly before 9am from any of these airports and your odds of arriving late drop dramatically. Leave after noon, and you're playing a different game entirely.
Airport Overview: June 2025
| Airport | Departures | Cancellation Rate | Late Arrival Rate | Avg Delay (when late) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LAX | 16,578 | 0.6% | 21.0% | 71 min |
| BUR | 2,664 | 1.2% | 18.7% | 64 min |
| LGB | 1,430 | 0.5% | 15.5% | 49 min |
| SNA | 3,945 | 1.1% | 22.0% | 74 min |
Long Beach (LGB) is the standout performer — lowest late rate (15.5%), lowest average delay when things do go wrong (49 minutes), and the lowest cancellation rate of the four. The catch: Southwest is essentially the only carrier there, and the route network is limited. If LGB serves your destination, it's worth serious consideration.
SNA is the quiet disappointment. Orange County passengers face the highest late-arrival rate (22%) and the longest average delay when things go wrong (74 minutes). For an airport that markets itself as the premium alternative to LAX, that's a tough number.
LAX performs about as expected for a mega-hub — enormous volume, moderate cancellation rate, and a 21% late arrival rate that sounds bad but is actually fairly typical for a complex international airport in peak summer.
The Time-of-Day Effect: Fly Early or Pay the Price
| Departure Window | LAX | BUR | LGB | SNA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Before 9am | 11.6% | 7.9% | 4.5% | 9.2% |
| 9am–12pm | 20.3% | 7.7% | 11.0% | 18.1% |
| 12–3pm | 28.1% | 22.2% | 20.9% | 27.2% |
| 3–6pm | 24.3% | 25.9% | 23.8% | 30.4% |
| 6pm+ | 24.9% | 29.8% | 25.7% | 28.2% |
The pattern is consistent across all four airports: morning flights are substantially more reliable than afternoon and evening flights. At LGB, flying before 9am gives you a 4.5% late rate. Wait until the 3–6pm window and that jumps to 23.8% — more than five times worse.
Why does this happen? It's called the late-aircraft cascade. Planes don't sit idle between flights — the aircraft that flies you to Denver at 4pm was probably in Chicago this morning. If that earlier flight was delayed, your aircraft arrives late. Your boarding starts late. You push back late. And the delay compounds through the day.
The data confirms this clearly: in the early morning, only about 5–16% of delayed-flight minutes at these airports are attributable to late arriving aircraft. By afternoon and evening, that share jumps to 47–71%. The airport itself isn't getting worse — it's accumulating the sins of every other airport in the network.
BUR is the interesting exception. Its 9am–12pm window (7.7% late rate) is almost as good as its early morning (7.9%) — suggesting Burbank's simpler operations and single-terminal structure absorb morning disruptions better than the mega-airports.
Airline Performance at Each Airport
Only carriers with 700+ operations shown.
LAX
| Airline | Ops | Cancel Rate | Late Rate | Avg Delay |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest | 3,321 | 0.2% | 14.6% | 78 min |
| United | 2,419 | 0.4% | 17.3% | 60 min |
| Southwest | 2,147 | 0.1% | 19.0% | 52 min |
| Delta | 3,282 | 0.8% | 23.2% | 66 min |
| American | 2,652 | 0.8% | 26.1% | 83 min |
SkyWest (operating as United Express/Delta Connection) posts the best late rate at LAX (14.6%), though its average delay when late (78 minutes) suggests that when things do go wrong, they go quite wrong. American's 26.1% late rate and 83-minute average delay are the worst at LAX — notable for the airport's second-largest operator.
Southwest's cancellation rate of 0.1% is exceptional — essentially zero. If you're worried about outright cancellations, Southwest is your safest bet at LAX.
BUR, LGB and SNA
Southwest is the dominant or sole qualifying carrier at all three smaller airports. Their numbers tell a consistent story:
| Airport | Ops | Cancel | Late | Avg Delay |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BUR | 1,606 | 1.5% | 16.1% | 56 min |
| LGB | 1,280 | 0.5% | 16.8% | 49 min |
| SNA | 1,247 | 1.0% | 20.9% | 51 min |
Southwest performs best at LGB and worst at SNA — mirroring the overall airport rankings.
The Cheat Sheet: What to Do With This
- Book the earliest flight available. At every airport in this analysis, the before-9am window outperforms every other window by a wide margin. The 5am alarm is annoying. A 74-minute delay at SNA is worse.
- Consider LGB if your route works. It's the best-performing airport in the LA basin by every metric we measured. Southwest serves a solid set of domestic destinations from there.
- Avoid SNA afternoon departures. The 3–6pm window hits 30.4% late rate — the worst single number in this entire analysis.
- At LAX, United and SkyWest outperform American and Delta on late rates. If you have a choice of carrier on the same route, it's worth noting.
- Cancellations are rare across the board — June 2025 was clean data with no anomalies. The risk in LA is delays, not cancellations. Build buffer time for connections.
Planning a trip through LA? Compare flight prices across all four airports on Skyscanner — sometimes BUR or LGB is both cheaper and more reliable than LAX.
Will These Patterns Repeat This June?
Almost certainly yes, for the structural patterns. The time-of-day cascade effect is not a June 2025 phenomenon — it's a function of how airline networks operate. Aircraft rotate through multiple cities per day. Delays compound. Morning flights are fresher. That's true every month, every year.
The airport rankings are also fairly stable — LGB's simpler operations and SNA's tendency to struggle in the afternoon are structural, not one-month flukes.
What changes year to year: specific carrier rankings (one bad month for an airline can reflect a temporary disruption), and absolute delay rates (summers with more weather events will be worse overall).
The cheat sheet above should hold. Get on that early flight.
Methodology: U.S. DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics "Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance" data, June 2025 (public domain). Sample: 24,617 departures from LAX, BUR, LGB, SNA. "Late" defined as arrival 15+ minutes behind schedule (ArrDel15=1). Delay averages use completed non-cancelled flights only. All four airports passed anomaly screening — no dates flagged for exclusion. Carrier-level figures reflect single-month snapshots and may vary; airport and time-of-day patterns are structural. BTS data carries approximately a 2-month publication lag.