Route reliability record
AUS→ELP
Austin to El Paso
- Flights
- 1,045
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 528 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,045 AUS to ELP flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly AUS to ELP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 82.1%, against 74.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,039 completed flights
Avg delay
49 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.29%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
74.0% on time across 1,045 flights
These figures cover 1,045 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 3 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 AUS to ELP
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 | 1,045 | 74.0% | 49 min | 0.29% | C+ |
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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 39 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am81 flights96.2%
- 8am–11am180 flights93.3%
- 11am–2pm143 flights80.3%
- 2pm–5pm250 flights65.5%
- 5pm–8pm176 flights72.0%
- 8pm–5am215 flights56.8%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.8% on time, against 96.2% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 250 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter AUS to ELP 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 AUS to ELP, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 96.2% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 56.8%, a wide gap of 39.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am96.2%
- 8–11am93.3%
- 11am–2pm80.3%
- 2–5pm65.5%
- 5–8pm72.0%
- 8pm–5am56.8%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 31 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.
July is the worst month at 58.6% on time, 31 points below September, the best at 89.5%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 101 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 64.9%, a spread of 17 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 69% of the 13,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 69%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 5%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
69% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 28 to one. The split is drawn from 13,254 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 96.2% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.29%, 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
6.7% 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 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 528 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.3% on time across 1,038 flights, 6 points above 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,045 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ELP after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,045 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 74.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,039 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
AUS to ELP questions
How often is AUS to ELP delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 26.0% of the 1,045 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is AUS to ELP compared with the rest of the country?
74.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 3 points against it. That is worth a C+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on AUS to ELP?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 96.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 56.8%, 39 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 July delays on AUS to ELP?
July is the weakest month at 58.6% on time, compared with 89.5% in September. Across the year that is 31 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
- ELP to AUS — the return legseparate record
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- AUS to DEN, a related route78.9%
- DFW to ELP, a related route68.1%
- AUS to DFW, a related route74.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record74.0%
- 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. AUS to ELP and ELP to AUS 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.