Carrier route record

WNLAS→RNO

Southwest Airlines · Las Vegas to Reno

Flights: 3,215
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 80%
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 RNO lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 3,215 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on LAS to RNO from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

78.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,193 completed flights

Avg delay

52 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.56%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.7%

Every carrier on LAS to RNO, 4,020 flights

These figures cover 3,215 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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

Southwest against every carrier on LAS to RNO

Southwest flew 3,215 of the 4,020 flights on LAS to RNO, most of the route. Its 78.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 79.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 87.8% to Frontier at 77.6%. 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 RNO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlines	541	87.8%	79 min	1.66%	A
Southwest Airlines (this page)	3,215	78.5%	52 min	0.56%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	264	77.6%	97 min	1.89%	B

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 29 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–8am482 flights96.5%
8am–11am514 flights89.7%
11am–2pm554 flights80.7%
2pm–5pm585 flights69.9%
5pm–8pm541 flights69.5%
8pm–5am539 flights67.9%

Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.5% of the time, against 67.9% for the overnight window. That is 29 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 585 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on LAS to RNO through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.January best, June worst

June is the worst month at 71.3% on time, 14 points below January, the best at 85.0%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 330 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 70.0%. 15 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 60% 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
60%
Carrier
31%
National Airspace System
9%
Extreme weather
0%

60% 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 60 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 35,251 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 96.5% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.56%, 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

5.9% 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 roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 345 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 82.2% on time across 3,213 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 3,215 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 RNO

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 85.0% on time and June 71.3%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 3,193 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