Carrier route record
WNLAS→LAX
Southwest Airlines · Las Vegas to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 2,386
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 29%
- Carriers
- 8
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on LAS to LAX sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 45 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 2,386 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
68.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,377 completed flights
Avg delay
47 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.38%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.8%
Every carrier on LAS to LAX, 8,325 flights
These figures cover 2,386 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 LAX
Southwest flew 2,386 of the 8,325 flights on LAS to LAX, about 29% of it. Its 68.2% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last 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; American Airlines manages 75.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,060 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 | 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 (this page) | 2,386 | 68.2% | 47 min | 0.38% | C+ |
The spread between Spirit and American is 12 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 12 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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 35 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am297 flights90.2%
- 8am–11am484 flights82.0%
- 11am–2pm372 flights70.7%
- 2pm–5pm399 flights57.4%
- 5pm–8pm383 flights55.6%
- 8pm–5am451 flights57.0%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.6% on time, against 90.2% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 484 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on LAS to LAX through the year
July is the worst month at 58.9% on time, 19 points below February, the best at 77.4%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 219 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.0%. 22 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 53% of the 35,000 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
53% 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 35,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 53 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 35,491 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 13,000 of the 35,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.38%, 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
6.6% 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 roughly 45 minutes, 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 72.2% on time across 2,386 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 2,386 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 Southwest on LAS to LAX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 77.4% on time and July 58.9%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,377 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAS to LAX, every carrier
- Southwest 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%
- Delta Air Lines on LAS to LAX84.0%
- Frontier Airlines on LAS to LAX80.6%
- American Airlines on LAS to LAX75.3%
- Southwest Airlines 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.