Route reliability record
LAS→FAT
Las Vegas to Fresno
- Flights
- 1,736
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 259 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,736 LAS to FAT flights, of which Allegiant Air flew 643 at 83.9% on time.
Best time to fly LAS to FAT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.3% of the time and Saturday flights 88.0%, against 78.2% 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
78.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,725 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.63%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Allegiant
83.9% on time across 643 flights
These figures cover 1,736 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 LAS to FAT
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Allegiant Air arrives on time 83.9% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 74.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,093 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Allegiant Air | 643 | 83.9% | 80 min | 0.62% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,093 | 74.9% | 51 min | 0.64% | C+ |
Allegiant leads Southwest by 9 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 Las Vegas to Fresno
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. LAS → FATLas Vegas to Fresno | Allegiant Air | 83.4% | 83.9% | 0.62% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. LAS → FATLas Vegas to Fresno | Southwest Airlines | 74.4% | 74.9% | 0.64% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
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 29 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am88 flights94.3%
- 8am–11am404 flights87.1%
- 11am–2pm360 flights81.1%
- 2pm–5pm404 flights72.7%
- 5pm–8pm182 flights78.2%
- 8pm–5am298 flights65.2%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.3% of the time, against 65.2% for the overnight window. That is 29 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 404 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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 63.6% on time, 23 points below February, the best at 86.3%. 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 88.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 73.3%. 15 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 42% of the 22,000 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.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 16%Extreme weather
- 8%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 16% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 21,968 reported delay minutes.
42% 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 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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.
Cancellations are rare at 0.63%, 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
6.4% 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 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 82.2% on time across 1,736 flights, 4 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 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 FAT 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 86.3% on time and June 63.6%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,725 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAS to FAT questions
How often is LAS to FAT 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 21.8% of the 1,736 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LAS to FAT?
Allegiant Air leads at 83.9% on time across 643 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 74.9%, a gap of 9 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 LAS to FAT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 65.2%, 29 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 LAS to FAT?
June is the weakest month at 63.6% on time, compared with 86.3% in February. Across the year that is 23 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
- FAT to LAS — the return legseparate record
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- Allegiant Air on LAS to FAT83.9%
- Southwest Airlines on LAS to FAT74.9%
- LAS to LAX, a related route78.8%
- SAN to FAT, a related route78.9%
- LAS to DEN, a related route77.0%
- Allegiant Air on-time record83.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record74.9%
- 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. LAS to FAT and FAT to LAS 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.