Carrier route record

WNLAS→MSP

Southwest Airlines · Las Vegas to Minneapolis

Flights: 167
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 8%
Carriers: 3

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

Southwest on LAS to MSP draws a C+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 167 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on LAS to MSP runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 99 extra late arrivals.

On time

67.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 167 completed flights

Avg delay

65 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

86.1%

Every carrier on LAS to MSP, 2,193 flights

These figures cover 167 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on LAS to MSP

Southwest flew 167 of the 2,193 flights on LAS to MSP, about 8% of it. Its 67.7% on time is 18 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 86.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 87.9% to Frontier at 50.0%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on LAS to MSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	2,012	87.9%	84 min	0.99%	A+
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	167	67.7%	65 min	0.00%	C+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	14	50.0%	34 min	0.00%	F+

Departure window

When Southwest runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 167 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Southwest's LAS to MSP record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 67.7% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Southwest on LAS to MSP through the year

Jul–Sep 202575 flights74.7%
Oct–Dec 202558 flights58.6%
Jan–Mar 202633 flights66.7%
Apr–Jun 20261 flights—

Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 67.7% on time across 167 flights.

Southwest on LAS to MSP did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 74.7% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 58.6%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 56 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 88.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 56.7%. 32 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 3,526 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
53%
Carrier
42%
National Airspace System
4%
Security
0%

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 3,526 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 3,526 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, 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 1,474 of the 3,526 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

The 1,299 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 89.2% on time across 167 flights, 22 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 22 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 167 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 MSP

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 167 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 67.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 167 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

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.

Key figures