Route reliability record
FAT→LAS
Fresno to Las Vegas
- Flights
- 1,736
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 259 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six 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 1,736 FAT to LAS flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 1,093 at 85.1% on time.
Best time to fly FAT to LAS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.4% of the time and Saturday flights 87.5%, against 82.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 46 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,727 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.40%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
85.1% on time across 1,093 flights
These figures cover 1,736 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 FAT to LAS
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 85.1% of the time; Allegiant Air manages 77.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 643 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,093 | 85.1% | 64 min | 0.27% | A+ |
| Allegiant Air | 643 | 77.3% | 92 min | 0.62% | B+ |
Southwest leads Allegiant by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Fresno 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. FAT → LASFresno to Las Vegas | Southwest Airlines | 84.9% | 85.1% | 0.27% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 2. FAT → LASFresno to Las Vegas | Allegiant Air | 76.8% | 77.3% | 0.62% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 26 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am365 flights96.4%
- 8am–11am309 flights90.3%
- 11am–2pm288 flights82.2%
- 2pm–5pm446 flights70.3%
- 5pm–8pm238 flights75.4%
- 8pm–5am90 flights73.3%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.4% of the time, against 70.3% for the afternoon window. That is 26 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 446 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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 71.3% on time, 18 points below February, the best at 89.5%. 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 173 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 87.5% on time and Thursday the weakest at 75.4%. 12 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 50% of the 24,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%National Airspace System
- 20%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
50% 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 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 23,694 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 96.4% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.40%, 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 actually costs
6.6% 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 259 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 78.2% on time across 1,736 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,736 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in LAS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 89.5% on time and June 71.3%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,727 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FAT to LAS questions
How often is FAT to LAS delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.8% of the 1,736 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 FAT to LAS?
Southwest Airlines leads at 85.1% on time across 1,093 flights. Allegiant Air is at the other end on 77.3%, a gap of 8 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 FAT to LAS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 96.4% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 70.3%, 26 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 FAT to LAS?
June is the weakest month at 71.3% on time, compared with 89.5% in February. Across the year that is 18 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 FAT — the return legseparate record
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on FAT to LAS85.1%
- Allegiant Air on FAT to LAS77.3%
- FAT to SAN, a related route76.2%
- LAX to LAS, a related route76.5%
- FAT to PHX, a related route81.0%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record85.1%
- Allegiant Air on-time record77.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. FAT to LAS and LAS to FAT 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.