Carrier route record
WNLAS→PDX
Southwest Airlines · Las Vegas to Portland
- Flights
- 1,149
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 39%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on LAS to PDX sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,149 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on LAS to PDX runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 53 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,145 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.26%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.8%
Every carrier on LAS to PDX, 2,984 flights
These figures cover 1,149 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.9% 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 PDX
Southwest flew 1,149 of the 2,984 flights on LAS to PDX, about 39% of it. Its 72.3% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 88.2% to Southwest at 72.3%. Two 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 128 | 88.2% | 42 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 1,534 | 83.2% | 58 min | 0.65% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 173 | 76.2% | 53 min | 2.89% | B |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 1,149 | 72.3% | 56 min | 0.26% | C+ |
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 31 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am115 flights88.7%
- 8am–11am220 flights87.7%
- 11am–2pm131 flights81.5%
- 2pm–5pm142 flights66.2%
- 5pm–8pm289 flights65.4%
- 8pm–5am252 flights58.0%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.0% on time, against 88.7% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 289 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on LAS to PDX through the year
June is the worst month at 57.4% on time, 29 points below January, the best at 86.0%. 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 115 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 78.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 65.9%. 13 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 62% of the 18,000 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.
- 62%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 4%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
62% 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 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 62 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 17,610 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 88.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.26%, 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
8.9% 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.
The 763 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 77.2% on time across 1,149 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,149 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 PDX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 86.0% on time and June 57.4%, a swing of 29 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,145 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAS to PDX, every carrier
- Southwest on PDX to LAS, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on LAS to PDX88.2%
- Alaska Airlines on LAS to PDX83.2%
- Frontier Airlines on LAS to PDX76.2%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.