Carrier route record
WNLAS→ELP
Southwest Airlines · Las Vegas to El Paso
- Flights
- 1,054
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 80%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on LAS to ELP sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,054 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on LAS to ELP runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 48 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,046 completed flights
Avg delay
48 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.47%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.3%
Every carrier on LAS to ELP, 1,316 flights
These figures cover 1,054 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on LAS to ELP
Southwest flew 1,054 of the 1,316 flights on LAS to ELP, most of the route. Its 72.8% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 80.8% to Southwest at 72.8%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 262 | 80.8% | 87 min | 0.76% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 1,054 | 72.8% | 48 min | 0.47% | 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 34 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–8am125 flights91.2%
- 8am–11am242 flights88.8%
- 11am–2pm37 flights81.1%
- 2pm–5pm276 flights62.0%
- 5pm–8pm116 flights75.7%
- 8pm–5am258 flights57.5%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.5% on time, against 91.2% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 276 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on LAS to ELP through the year
June is the worst month at 60.7% on time, 24 points below February, the best at 84.9%. 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 99 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.1%. 23 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 55% of the 14,000 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
- 34%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 1%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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 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 13,576 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 4,682 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.47%, 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
6.3% 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 roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 584 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.2% on time across 1,050 flights, 8 points above 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,054 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 LAS to ELP
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,054 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 72.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,046 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAS to ELP, every carrier
- Southwest on ELP to LAS, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on LAS to ELP80.8%
- 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.