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DelayAtlas

Carrier route record

UALASLAX

United Airlines · Las Vegas to Los Angeles

Flights
1,574
Period
July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route
19%
Carriers
8
A+GRADE

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.

United on LAS to LAX earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 55 minutes. That rests on 1,574 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

86.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,563 completed flights

Avg delay

55 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.70%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.8%

Every carrier on LAS to LAX, 8,325 flights

These figures cover 1,574 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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

United against every carrier on LAS to LAX

United flew 1,574 of the 8,325 flights on LAS to LAX, about 19% of it. Its 86.2% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two 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.

On-time performance by carrier on LAS to LAX
AirlineFlightsOn timeAvg delayCancelledGrade
Spirit Airlines64687.3%62 min0.93%A+
United Airlines (this page)1,57486.2%55 min0.70%A+
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample31284.0%66 min1.60%B
Delta Air Lines1,73784.0%72 min0.92%B+
Frontier Airlines59380.6%57 min0.17%B+
American Airlines1,06075.3%93 min0.94%B+
Alaska Airlinesthin sample1770.6%30 min0.00%C+
Southwest Airlines2,38668.2%47 min0.38%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

United flight numbers on LAS to LAX

Departure window

When United runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 32 points, against 19 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

  • 5am–8am419 flights95.2%
  • 8am–11am474 flights87.7%
  • 11am–2pm135 flights84.3%
  • 2pm–5pm225 flights82.9%
  • 5pm–8pm238 flights79.7%
  • 8pm–5am83 flights63.4%

Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.4% on time, against 95.2% 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 474 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on LAS to LAX through the year

On-time rate by calendar month85J88F91M87A83M83J87J85A88S86O84N89D
Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.March best, May worst

Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 82.5%. March is the strongest month at 91.2%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 9 points. March was the busiest month here, with 148 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 82.4%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

On-time rate by day of the week82.6Mon89.1Tue92.8Wed82.4Thu82.4Fri91.0Sat85.1Sun
Monday: 82.6 percent on time. Tuesday: 89.1 percent on time. Wednesday: 92.8 percent on time. Thursday: 82.4 percent on time. Friday: 82.4 percent on time. Saturday: 91.0 percent on time. Sunday: 85.1 percent on time

Delay causes

Why United runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 12,000 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.

  • Late-arriving aircraft
    51%
  • National Airspace System
    25%
  • Carrier
    22%
  • Extreme weather
    2%

51% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 29 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 11,760 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 95.2% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.70%, 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

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 runs 83.6% on time across 1,572 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

The sample behind these figures is 1,574 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 United on LAS to LAX

Put together: avoid the 8pm–5am departure. It runs 63.4% on time against 95.2% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 32 points is the largest single thing you control here. Spirit Airlines is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 1,563 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Related

Where to go next

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.