Carrier route record
WNBUF→TPA
Southwest Airlines · Buffalo to Tampa
- Flights
- 630
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 83%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on BUF to TPA lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 630 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on BUF to TPA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 626 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.32%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.5%
Every carrier on BUF to TPA, 757 flights
These figures cover 630 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 BUF to TPA
Southwest flew 630 of the 757 flights on BUF to TPA, most of the route. Its 79.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 78.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 79.4% to Frontier at 74.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 (this page) | 630 | 79.4% | 63 min | 0.32% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 127 | 74.2% | 76 min | 1.57% | C |
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 33 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am248 flights92.3%
- 8am–11am60 flights88.1%
- 11am–2pm33 flights90.9%
- 2pm–5pm62 flights59.0%
- 5pm–8pm200 flights67.2%
- 8pm–5am27 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.3% of the time, against 59.0% for the afternoon window. That is 33 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 248 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on BUF to TPA through the year
July is the worst month at 61.8% on time, 31 points below September, the best at 92.7%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 66 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 90.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.4%. 20 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 64% of the 8,121 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.
- 64%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
64% 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 8,121 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 64 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 8,121 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 92.3% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.32%, 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
6.7% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,053 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 runs 79.8% on time across 629 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 630 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 BUF to TPA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 630 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 79.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 626 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BUF to TPA, every carrier
- Southwest on TPA to BUF, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on BUF to TPA74.2%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.