Carrier route record
WNBUR→LAS
Southwest Airlines · Burbank to Las Vegas
- Flights
- 3,180
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 76%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on BUR to LAS lands a B, 3 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 3,180 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on BUR to LAS from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,139 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.23%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.8%
Every carrier on BUR to LAS, 4,203 flights
These figures cover 3,180 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 BUR to LAS
Southwest flew 3,180 of the 4,203 flights on BUR to LAS, most of the route. Its 80.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 82.6% to Frontier at 71.4%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines | 910 | 82.6% | 72 min | 2.75% | B |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 3,180 | 80.6% | 60 min | 1.23% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 113 | 71.4% | 87 min | 0.88% | 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 22 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–8am306 flights94.7%
- 8am–11am744 flights90.9%
- 11am–2pm526 flights77.1%
- 2pm–5pm683 flights76.7%
- 5pm–8pm641 flights72.3%
- 8pm–5am280 flights73.4%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.7% of the time, against 72.3% for the evening window. That is 22 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 744 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on BUR to LAS through the year
Delays peak in September, when the on-time rate falls to 76.6%. February is the strongest month at 86.6%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 10 points. June was the busiest month here, with 282 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 89.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 72.5%. 17 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 57% of the 36,000 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%National Airspace System
- 9%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
57% 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 36,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 37 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 36,161 reported delay minutes.
32% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 12,000 minutes out of 36,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.23% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.06%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.1% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 223 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 77.6% on time across 3,163 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,180 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.
What to do with this
Booking Southwest on BUR to LAS
Put together: avoid the 5pm–8pm departure. It runs 72.3% on time against 94.7% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 22 points is the largest single thing you control here. Spirit Airlines is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 3,139 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BUR to LAS, every carrier
- Southwest on LAS to BUR, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on BUR to LAS82.6%
- Frontier Airlines on BUR to LAS71.4%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Harry Reid International (LAS) 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.