Route reliability record
LAS→SAN
Las Vegas to San Diego
- Flights
- 5,379
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 258 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route draws a D+. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about 55 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 5,379 LAS to SAN flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,194 at 71.3% on time.
Best time to fly LAS to SAN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 73.7%, against 62.4% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 149 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 5,317 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.99%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
71.3% on time across 1,194 flights
These figures cover 5,379 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on LAS to SAN
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 71.3% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 58.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 3,757 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 77 | 82.9% | 148 min | 1.30% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,194 | 71.3% | 60 min | 1.17% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 350 | 66.9% | 90 min | 0.86% | C+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 3,757 | 58.7% | 50 min | 0.93% | D+ |
The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Flights on LAS to SAN
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Las Vegas to San Diego
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LAS → SANLas Vegas to San Diego | SkyWest Airlines | 70.5% | 71.3% | 1.17% | 5am–8am, Tue | OO 3741 12:57 |
| 2. LAS → SANLas Vegas to San Diego | Southwest Airlines | 58.2% | 58.7% | 0.93% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 34 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am735 flights85.8%
- 8am–11am1,106 flights66.6%
- 11am–2pm941 flights57.3%
- 2pm–5pm958 flights61.5%
- 5pm–8pm948 flights52.4%
- 8pm–5am691 flights52.2%
Scale runs 45% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 52.2% on time, against 85.8% 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 1,106 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LAS to SAN by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On LAS to SAN, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 85.8% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 52.2%, a wide gap of 33.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am85.8%
- 8–11am66.6%
- 11am–2pm57.3%
- 2–5pm61.5%
- 5–8pm52.4%
- 8pm–5am52.2%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
August is the worst month at 40.9% on time, 32 points below September, the best at 72.5%. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 610 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 73.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 52.1%, a spread of 22 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 109,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%National Airspace System
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
34% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 109,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 to one. The split is drawn from 109,329 reported delay minutes.
35% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 38,000 minutes out of 109,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 0.99% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
10.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 258 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 73.7% on time across 5,348 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 5,379 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in SAN after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 72.5% on time and August 40.9%, a swing of 32 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 5,317 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAS to SAN questions
How often is LAS to SAN delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 37.6% of the 5,379 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 55 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LAS to SAN?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 71.3% on time across 1,194 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 58.7%, a gap of 13 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LAS to SAN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 52.2%, 34 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are August delays on LAS to SAN?
August is the weakest month at 40.9% on time, compared with 72.5% in September. Across the year that is 32 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- SAN to LAS — the return legseparate record
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on LAS to SAN71.3%
- Frontier Airlines on LAS to SAN66.9%
- Southwest Airlines on LAS to SAN58.7%
- LAS to LAX, a related route77.9%
- SFO to SAN, a related route62.2%
- LAS to DEN, a related route76.5%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record82.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record71.3%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. LAS to SAN and SAN to LAS are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.