Route reliability record
ELP→AUS
El Paso to Austin
- Flights
- 1,038
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 528 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 50 minutes on average. That rests on 1,038 ELP to AUS flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly ELP to AUS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 97.8% of the time and Saturday flights 85.4%, against 80.3% 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
80.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,031 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.48%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
80.3% on time across 1,038 flights
These figures cover 1,038 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 4 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 ELP to AUS
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 | 1,038 | 80.3% | 50 min | 0.48% | B+ |
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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 42 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am323 flights97.8%
- 8am–11am104 flights90.3%
- 11am–2pm294 flights77.0%
- 2pm–5pm89 flights59.6%
- 5pm–8pm117 flights70.7%
- 8pm–5am111 flights55.9%
Scale runs 45% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.9% on time, against 97.8% 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 323 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ELP to AUS 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 ELP to AUS, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 97.8% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 55.9%, a wide gap of 41.9 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am97.8%
- 8–11am90.3%
- 11am–2pm77.0%
- 2–5pm59.6%
- 5–8pm70.7%
- 8pm–5am55.9%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 40 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.
June is the worst month at 57.0% on time, 40 points below January, the best at 97.0%. 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 98 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 85.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 74.8%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 66% of the 10,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 66%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
66% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 66 to one. The split is drawn from 10,187 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 97.8% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.48%, 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
5.0% 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 74.0% on time across 1,045 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. 1,038 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 AUS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,038 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 80.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,031 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ELP to AUS questions
How often is ELP to AUS delayed?
About 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 19.7% of the 1,038 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is ELP to AUS compared with the rest of the country?
80.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 3 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ELP to AUS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 97.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 55.9%, 42 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 June delays on ELP to AUS?
June is the weakest month at 57.0% on time, compared with 97.0% in January. Across the year that is 40 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
- AUS to ELP — the return legseparate record
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- ELP to DFW, a related route78.4%
- DEN to AUS, a related route76.2%
- ELP to PHX, a related route81.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record80.3%
- 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. ELP to AUS and AUS to ELP 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.