Carrier route record
WNAUS→LAX
Southwest Airlines · Austin to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 1,025
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 25%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on AUS to LAX sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,025 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 451 at 88.8% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 88.8% on time across 451 flights.
Key figures
On time
75.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,018 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.49%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.3%
Every carrier on AUS to LAX, 4,077 flights
These figures cover 1,025 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 2 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.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on AUS to LAX
Southwest flew 1,025 of the 4,077 flights on AUS to LAX, about 25% of it. Its 75.0% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 81.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 88.8% to American at 71.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 88.8% of the time; American Airlines manages 71.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 482 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 451 | 88.8% | 91 min | 0.44% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 817 | 88.0% | 71 min | 0.49% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,286 | 83.0% | 69 min | 1.09% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 16 | 75.0% | 54 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 1,025 | 75.0% | 52 min | 0.49% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 482 | 71.5% | 98 min | 1.04% | C |
The spread between United and American is 17 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 17 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 32 points, against 17 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am251 flights96.0%
- 8am–11am65 flights95.2%
- 11am–2pm118 flights67.2%
- 2pm–5pm199 flights65.3%
- 5pm–8pm146 flights68.5%
- 8pm–5am246 flights63.9%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.9% on time, against 96.0% 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 251 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on AUS to LAX through the year
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 60.0%. January is the strongest month at 91.2%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 31 points. December was the busiest month here, with 100 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.9%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 13,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 59%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
59% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 23 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 13,180 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 96.0% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.49%, below the national 1.81% 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 costs
7.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,242 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 68.8% on time across 1,026 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,025 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.
What to do with this
Booking Southwest on AUS to LAX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,025 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 75.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,018 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- AUS to LAX, every carrier
- Southwest on LAX to AUS, the return leg
- United Airlines on AUS to LAX88.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on AUS to LAX88.0%
- Delta Air Lines on AUS to LAX83.0%
- American Airlines on AUS to LAX71.5%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.