Carrier route record
DLLAS→LAX
Delta Air Lines · Las Vegas to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 1,737
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 21%
- Carriers
- 8
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on LAS to LAX earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,737 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Spirit Airlines, flew 646 at 87.3% on time.
Spirit Airlines is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 87.3% on time across 646 flights.
Key figures
On time
84.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,721 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.92%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.8%
Every carrier on LAS to LAX, 8,325 flights
These figures cover 1,737 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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
Delta against every carrier on LAS to LAX
Delta flew 1,737 of the 8,325 flights on LAS to LAX, about 21% of it. Its 84.0% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of eight carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 87.3% to Southwest at 68.2%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Spirit Airlines arrives on time 87.3% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 68.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,386 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines | 646 | 87.3% | 62 min | 0.93% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 1,574 | 86.2% | 55 min | 0.70% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 312 | 84.0% | 66 min | 1.60% | B |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,737 | 84.0% | 72 min | 0.92% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 593 | 80.6% | 57 min | 0.17% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 1,060 | 75.3% | 93 min | 0.94% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 17 | 70.6% | 30 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 2,386 | 68.2% | 47 min | 0.38% | C+ |
The spread between Spirit and Southwest is 19 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 19 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on LAS to LAX
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 15 points, against 19 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am365 flights93.7%
- 8am–11am321 flights88.9%
- 11am–2pm224 flights80.4%
- 2pm–5pm197 flights79.1%
- 5pm–8pm458 flights78.8%
- 8pm–5am172 flights78.9%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.7% of the time, against 78.8% for the evening window. That is 15 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 458 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on LAS to LAX through the year
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 78.9%. June is the strongest month at 88.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 10 points. January was the busiest month here, with 156 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 89.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.8%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 20,000 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 40%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
47% 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 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 43 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 19,863 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 7,995 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.92% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.2% 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 236 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 78.5% on time across 1,735 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,737 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.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on LAS to LAX
Put together: avoid the 5pm–8pm departure. It runs 78.8% on time against 93.7% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 15 points is the largest single thing you control here. Spirit Airlines is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 1,721 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAS to LAX, every carrier
- Delta on LAX to LAS, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on LAS to LAX87.3%
- United Airlines on LAS to LAX86.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on LAS to LAX84.0%
- Frontier Airlines on LAS to LAX80.6%
- American Airlines on LAS to LAX75.3%
- Southwest Airlines on LAS to LAX68.2%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.