Route reliability record
LAS→SAT
Las Vegas to San Antonio
- Flights
- 2,053
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,069 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 55 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 2,053 LAS to SAT flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Best time to fly LAS to SAT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.4% of the time and Saturday flights 85.8%, against 75.8% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,042 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.29%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
73.3% on time across 1,564 flights
These figures cover 2,053 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on LAS to SAT
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 277 | 85.1% | 62 min | 0.72% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 212 | 82.5% | 94 min | 0.47% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,564 | 73.3% | 50 min | 0.19% | C+ |
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 37 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–8am369 flights95.4%
- 8am–11am429 flights84.4%
- 11am–2pm312 flights79.5%
- 2pm–5pm407 flights64.1%
- 5pm–8pm380 flights63.7%
- 8pm–5am156 flights58.2%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.2% on time, against 95.4% 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 429 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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.
October is the best month on the calendar at 84.0% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. December was the busiest month here, with 205 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 85.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.4%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 27,000 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
52% 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 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 52 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 26,846 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 95.4% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.29%, 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 actually costs
6.5% 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 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,069 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 81.5% on time across 2,059 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,053 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 SAT 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. October runs 84.0% on time and May 63.2%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 2,042 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAS to SAT questions
How often is LAS to SAT delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 24.2% of the 2,053 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 55 minutes on average.
How reliable is LAS to SAT compared with the rest of the country?
75.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 2 points against it. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LAS to SAT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 58.2%, 37 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 May delays on LAS to SAT?
May is the weakest month at 63.2% on time, compared with 84.0% in October. Across the year that is 21 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
- SAT to LAS — the return legseparate record
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- San Antonio International (SAT) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on LAS to SAT85.1%
- Spirit Airlines on LAS to SAT82.5%
- Southwest Airlines on LAS to SAT73.3%
- LAS to LAX, a related route78.8%
- DFW to SAT, a related route67.0%
- LAS to DEN, a related route77.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record85.1%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record82.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record73.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. LAS to SAT and SAT 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.