Route reliability record
CLE→LAS
Cleveland to Las Vegas
- Flights
- 981
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,824 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 981 CLE to LAS flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 369 at 80.3% on time.
Best time to fly CLE to LAS: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 80.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 84.9%, against 77.9% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
77.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 969 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.02%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
80.3% on time across 369 flights
These figures cover 981 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
Which airline is most reliable on CLE to LAS
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 369 | 80.3% | 55 min | 0.54% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 609 | 76.3% | 90 min | 1.31% | B |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 80.3%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on CLE to LAS
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Cleveland to Las Vegas
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. CLE → LASCleveland to Las Vegas | Southwest Airlines | 79.9% | 80.3% | 0.54% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. CLE → LASCleveland to Las Vegas | Frontier Airlines | 75.3% | 76.3% | 1.31% | 5pm–8pm, Sat | F9 3231 07:30 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 981 flights.
- 5am–8am156 flights80.3%
- 8am–11am167 flights80.1%
- 11am–2pm168 flights80.7%
- 2pm–5pm228 flights74.9%
- 5pm–8pm97 flights79.2%
- 8pm–5am165 flights74.1%
Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 80.7% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 74.1%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 228 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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.
December is the weak month at 59.7% on time, against 88.3% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.9%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 17,000 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.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
55% 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 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 27 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 16,690 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.02% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.20%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.6% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,824 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg runs 76.8% on time across 984 flights, within about 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. 981 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 LAS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 981 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 77.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 969 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLE to LAS questions
How often is CLE to LAS delayed?
Roughly 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 22.1% of the 981 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on CLE to LAS?
Southwest Airlines leads at 80.3% on time across 369 flights. Frontier Airlines is at the other end on 76.3%, a gap of 4 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLE to LAS?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 80.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 74.1%, 7 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 December delays on CLE to LAS?
December is the weakest month at 59.7% on time, compared with 88.3% in September. Across the year that is 29 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 CLE — the return legseparate record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on CLE to LAS80.3%
- Frontier Airlines on CLE to LAS76.3%
- CLE to ORD, a related route74.6%
- LAX to LAS, a related route76.5%
- CLE to ATL, a related route85.4%
- American Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record100.0%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record80.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. CLE to LAS and LAS to CLE 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.