Route profile
MIA→LAX
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Miami to Los Angeles, 2,342 miles.
Right now
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Route reliability
July 2023 – July 2026
Better than 35% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 10,497 flights. How this is calculated
MIA → LAX arrives on time 74.0% of the time; the return trip, LAX → MIA, arrives on time 78.6% of the time, a 4.7-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
MIA → LAX spends 32.2 minutes on the ground on a 2,342-mile trip: 21.3 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at MIA and 10.9 minutes from touchdown to gate at LAX.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Why MIA → LAX flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
MIA → LAX cancelled 54 of 10,497 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 194. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 61.1% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 318 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 54 cancelled departures carrying a reason code.
What each reason means
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
33 cancellations, 61.1% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
19 cancellations, 35.2% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
2 cancellations, 3.7% of the total.
A terminal evacuation, a security breach, screening equipment failure, or screening queues over 29 minutes.
0 cancellations, 0.0% of the total.
Reason codes are the operating airline’s own filing with US DOT, not an independent finding of fault. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
54 coded cancellations were recorded on MIA → LAX; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
55 min late
against a median of 5 min early
MIA → LAX has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 5 min early, but the worst tenth are 60 minutes worse than that. If the trip has something unmissable at the end of it, the median is the wrong number to plan against.
Percentiles over 10,497 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at LAX after arriving from MIA.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 41% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 25% | High risk |
| 60 min | 17% | High risk |
| 90 min | 9.0% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 5.7% | Some risk |
This is one leg of a connection. Gate changes and the next flight's own schedule matter too. And a connection can fail before delay is even the question — this route cancels 0.51% of the time and diverts 0.23% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 10,419 arrivals on this route that landed later than the connection time less 30 minutes to reach the next gate.
The worst tenth of arrivals on this route land at least 55 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 10,497 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
MIA → LAX flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 85.6% of the time, against 60.9% for 9 PM–5 AM departures, a gap of 24.7 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 5 AM: too few flights to score
- 6 AM: 84.1% on time from 692 flights
- 7 AM: 85.6% on time from 1,768 flights
- 8 AM: 86.5% on time from 1,273 flights
- 9 AM: 81.8% on time from 814 flights
- 10 AM: 79.2% on time from 492 flights
- 11 AM to 12 PM: too few flights to score
- 1 PM: 73.1% on time from 329 flights
- 2 PM: 62.7% on time from 446 flights
- 3 PM: 64.3% on time from 370 flights
- 4 PM: 69.1% on time from 480 flights
- 5 PM: 63.1% on time from 703 flights
- 6 PM: 65.4% on time from 423 flights
- 7 PM: 63.9% on time from 1,098 flights
- 8 PM: 62.6% on time from 520 flights
- 9 PM: 62.2% on time from 962 flights
- 10 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why MIA → LAX runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for MIA → LAX. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
How this route holds up in bad weather
July 2023 – July 2026
The harder-hit end is the one the flight leaves from, where a cancellation keeps it from departing at all. Bad weather cancels 3.3 times the normal rate at MIA against 1.3 times at LAX. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: MIA 4.5% against 1.3%, LAX 1.0% against 0.8%. Flights that did leave MIA in bad weather arrived on time 50.6% of the time, against 74.1% in normal hours.
Bad weather and normal hours at the airports
Scheduled departures, July 2023 – July 2026| Departures from | MIA | LAX |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 4.5% | 1.0% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 1.3% | 0.8% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 50.6% | 78.9% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 74.1% | 81.4% |
| Departures in bad weather | 15,746 | 60,639 |
Of the carriers on this route, Delta Air Lines (2.0% cancelled against 4.7% for the other carriers at MIA) cancelled the fewest departures from MIA in bad weather and American Airlines (5.4% cancelled against 4.2% for the other carriers at MIA) the most. One more carrier flies this route but has too few bad-weather departures from MIA to compare.
This route’s airlines in bad weather at MIA
All departures from MIA| Airline | Bad-weather departures | Cancelled | Other carriers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,774 | 2.0%below the others | 4.7% |
| American Airlines | 8,534 | 5.4%above the others | 4.2% |
These are airport figures, not route figures: every scheduled departure from MIA and LAX, to any destination, in hours the weather report called bad. The airline rows count each carrier’s departures from MIA on every route.
Weather source and limits. In full: MIA (airlines), LAX, What Weather Costs Each Airport, Who Cancels More When the Weather Turns, Airports That Change Places When Weather Turns.
Airlines on this route
Carriers with at least 200 flights, by the airline that operated each one.
| Carrier | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 8,547 | 72.6% | 0.48% | -4 min | 9.7% |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,289 | 84.7% | 0.85% | -10 min | 4.8% |
| JetBlue | 661 | 71.3% | 0.30% | -3 min | 10.5% |
American Airlines flew 81.4% of the 10,497 flights listed.
Delta Air Lines arrived on time 13.4 percentage points more often than JetBlue on this route.
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
| Flight | Scheduled | Operations | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| DL450 Delta Air Lines | 7:50 AM | 785 | 87.1% |
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Tuesday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 7.8 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 73.8%
- Feb: 74.4%
- Mar: 72.8%
- Apr: 76.6%
- May: 71.2%
- Jun: 73.0%
- Jul: 64.9%
- Aug: 69.6%
- Sep: 71.6%
- Oct: 83.1%
- Nov: 80.9%
- Dec: 77.8%
July is historically the weakest month and October the strongest, a spread of 18.2 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 65.4% from 309 flights
- August 2023: 68.3% from 309 flights
- September 2023: 64.4% from 277 flights
- October 2023: 82.6% from 327 flights
- November 2023: 79.2% from 293 flights
- December 2023: 76.6% from 313 flights
- January 2024: 68.2% from 361 flights
- February 2024: 64.0% from 311 flights
- March 2024: 65.4% from 344 flights
- April 2024: 75.5% from 329 flights
- May 2024: 65.9% from 337 flights
- June 2024: 69.5% from 290 flights
- July 2024: 63.0% from 251 flights
- August 2024: 66.5% from 245 flights
- September 2024: 76.1% from 240 flights
- October 2024: 85.9% from 257 flights
- November 2024: 86.1% from 268 flights
- December 2024: 81.9% from 287 flights
- January 2025: 81.0% from 280 flights
- February 2025: 89.1% from 249 flights
- March 2025: 75.4% from 274 flights
- April 2025: 80.0% from 270 flights
- May 2025: 71.7% from 279 flights
- June 2025: 73.2% from 270 flights
- July 2025: 64.5% from 277 flights
- August 2025: 74.2% from 252 flights
- September 2025: 75.9% from 212 flights
- October 2025: 81.0% from 269 flights
- November 2025: 77.6% from 280 flights
- December 2025: 75.1% from 286 flights
- January 2026: 73.7% from 299 flights
- February 2026: 72.5% from 237 flights
- March 2026: 79.6% from 276 flights
- April 2026: 74.7% from 285 flights
- May 2026: 76.7% from 304 flights
- June 2026: 76.5% from 268 flights
- July 2026: 66.5% from 282 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 75.4% against 77.6% in the 12 months before — declining by 2.2 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 10,497 MIA → LAX flight records from the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, covering July 2023 – July 2026. Late means 15 or more minutes past scheduled arrival; cancelled and diverted flights are left out of on-time rates.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: How Long a Layover Needs to Be · Two Airlines on One Route · Best Time of Day to Fly From Major US Airports
Analysis last recomputed