Route reliability record
ABQ→LAS
Albuquerque to Las Vegas
- Flights
- 1,715
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 486 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 1,715 ABQ to LAS flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly ABQ to LAS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.8% of the time and Saturday flights 90.2%, against 81.3% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 40 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,708 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.41%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
81.3% on time across 1,706 flights
These figures cover 1,715 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 ABQ to LAS
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,706 | 81.3% | 56 min | 0.41% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 9 | 77.8% | 155 min | 0.00% | B+ |
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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 36 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am365 flights95.8%
- 8am–11am278 flights91.0%
- 11am–2pm267 flights81.6%
- 2pm–5pm338 flights75.7%
- 5pm–8pm307 flights71.9%
- 8pm–5am160 flights60.1%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 60.1% on time, against 95.8% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ABQ to LAS 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 ABQ to LAS, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 95.8% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 60.1%, a wide gap of 35.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am95.8%
- 8–11am91.0%
- 11am–2pm81.6%
- 2–5pm75.7%
- 5–8pm71.9%
- 8pm–5am60.1%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
August is the worst month at 72.7% on time, 15 points below January, the best at 87.4%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. October was the busiest month here, with 157 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 90.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 74.2%, a spread of 16 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 18,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%National Airspace System
- 19%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 to one. The split is drawn from 18,032 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 95.8% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.41%, 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
5.7% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 486 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 75.5% on time across 1,712 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 1,715 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 LAS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 87.4% on time and August 72.7%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,708 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ABQ to LAS questions
How often is ABQ to LAS delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.7% of the 1,715 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ABQ to LAS compared with the rest of the country?
81.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 4 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ABQ to LAS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 60.1%, 36 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 August delays on ABQ to LAS?
August is the weakest month at 72.7% on time, compared with 87.4% in January. Across the year that is 15 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
- LAS to ABQ — the return legseparate record
- Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ) delay statistics
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- ABQ to PHX, a related route81.8%
- LAX to LAS, a related route75.8%
- ABQ to DEN, a related route82.3%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record81.3%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record77.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. ABQ to LAS and LAS to ABQ 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.