PlainFlights

LAX vs SBA - Airport Comparison

Select two airports to compare on-time performance, delays, cancellations, and top routes using U.S. Department of Transportation Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) data (2020–2025) across all 50 states. See our methodology for how metrics are computed.

Airport A
LAX

Los Angeles, CA

Los Angeles, California

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Airport B
SBA

Santa Barbara, CA

Santa Barbara, California

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Key Performance Metrics

BTS on-time performance data, 2020–2025 cumulative.

Metric LAX SBA
On-Time Rate (higher is better) 82.8% 83.3%
Avg Delay (lower is better) 72.9 min 78.6 min
Delay Rate (lower is better) 17.2% 16.7%
Cancellation Rate (lower is better) 0.74% 1.01%
Total Flights 2,137,032 83,263
Delayed Flights 366,815 13,934
Cancelled Flights 15,795 843
Top Delay Cause Carrier Late Aircraft

✓ / ▲ indicates the more favorable value. Data: BTS On-Time Performance, 2020–2025.

Delay Cause Breakdown

LAX - Los Angeles, CA

Carrier 41.7%
Late Aircraft 36.3%
NAS 18.5%
Weather 3.3%
Security 0.2%

SBA - Santa Barbara, CA

Late Aircraft 41.2%
Carrier 32.9%
NAS 20.1%
Weather 5.6%
Security 0.2%

Top Routes

Top routes from LAX

Route Flights On-Time
LAX → SFO
San Francisco
63,553 78.7%
SFO → LAX
Los Angeles
63,540 82.9%
LAX → LAS
Las Vegas
55,240 78.9%
LAS → LAX
Los Angeles
55,149 79.4%
JFK → LAX
Los Angeles
53,628 81.3%
LAX → JFK
New York
53,619 81.8%

Top routes from SBA

Route Flights On-Time
SFO → SBA
Santa Barbara
7,387 86%
SBA → SFO
San Francisco
7,381 79.2%
PHX → SBA
Santa Barbara
6,831 83.3%
SBA → PHX
Phoenix
6,831 85.7%
DEN → SBA
Santa Barbara
6,705 78.3%
SBA → DEN
Denver
6,705 84.5%

Source: Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), On-Time Performance Data (2020–2025) Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), On-Time Performance Data (2020–2025) On-time rates exclude cancelled and diverted flights. PlainFlights is not affiliated with BTS or the DOT

Every figure on PlainFlights is rendered directly from BTS On-Time Performance data, no number is typed in by an editor. This tool queries live on-time, delay, and cancellation figures for the two selected airports from the dataset. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.