Route reliability record
LAS→SFO
Las Vegas to San Francisco
- Flights
- 6,137
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 414 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route draws a D+. Roughly one flight in two 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 6,137 LAS to SFO flights, of which Alaska Airlines flew 1,102 at 63.3% on time.
Best time to fly LAS to SFO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 75.9% of the time and Saturday flights 69.7%, against 58.0% for the route overall.
Alaska Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 63.3% on time across 1,102 flights.
Key figures
On time
58.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 6,088 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.77%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Alaska
63.3% on time across 1,102 flights
These figures cover 6,137 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.7% 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 SFO
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Alaska Airlines arrives on time 63.3% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 42.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,312 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 1,102 | 63.3% | 52 min | 0.91% | D+ |
| United Airlines | 2,816 | 62.6% | 64 min | 0.43% | D+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 904 | 59.4% | 71 min | 1.66% | D |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,312 | 42.4% | 55 min | 0.76% | F+ |
The spread between Alaska and Southwest is 21 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 21 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Flights on LAS to SFO
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.
- United 57411:3066.1% · 364 flights
- United 235607:4559.1% · 346 flights
- Frontier 440114:4848.0% · 328 flights
- United 204716:0567.7% · 316 flights
- United 179913:3452.8% · 288 flights
- Frontier 380118:0060.1% · 282 flights
- Alaska 63418:0353.9% · 281 flights
- Alaska 61307:0072.1% · 271 flights
- United 126719:5239.2% · 268 flights
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Las Vegas to San Francisco
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 2 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LAS → SJCLas Vegas to San Jose | Southwest Airlines | 77.5% | 77.8% | 0.34% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 2. LAS → OAKLas Vegas to Oakland | Southwest Airlines | 71.3% | 71.6% | 0.38% | 5am–8am, Wed (route) | — |
| 3. LAS → SFOLas Vegas to San Francisco | Alaska Airlines | 62.7% | 63.3% | 0.91% | 5am–8am, Sat | AS 613 07:00 |
| 4. LAS → SFOLas Vegas to San Francisco | United Airlines | 62.3% | 62.6% | 0.43% | 5am–8am, Sat | UA 2047 16:05 |
| 5. LAS → SFOLas Vegas to San Francisco | Frontier Airlines | 58.4% | 59.4% | 1.66% | 5am–8am, Sat | F9 3801 18:00 |
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 21 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1,173 flights75.9%
- 8am–11am727 flights48.1%
- 11am–2pm1,178 flights63.0%
- 2pm–5pm1,009 flights61.8%
- 5pm–8pm1,168 flights50.0%
- 8pm–5am882 flights41.7%
Scale runs 35% to 80%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 41.7% on time, against 75.9% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 1,178 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LAS to SFO 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 SFO, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 75.9% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 41.7%, a wide gap of 34.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am75.9%
- 8–11am48.1%
- 11am–2pm63.0%
- 2–5pm61.8%
- 5–8pm50.0%
- 8pm–5am41.7%
best all US flightsScale 35% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 43 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.
July is the worst month at 39.9% on time, 43 points below March, the best at 83.3%. 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 549 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 69.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 52.2%, a spread of 18 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
National Airspace System accounts for 52% of the 154,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%National Airspace System
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
52% 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 80,000 minutes out of 154,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 154,228 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 75.9% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.77%, below the national 1.89% 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
13.7% 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 414 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 70.2% on time across 6,140 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 6,137 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 SFO 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. March runs 83.3% on time and July 39.9%, a swing of 43 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 6,088 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAS to SFO questions
How often is LAS to SFO delayed?
Roughly one flight in two arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 42.0% of the 6,137 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LAS to SFO?
Alaska Airlines leads at 63.3% on time across 1,102 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 42.4%, a gap of 21 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 SFO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 75.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 41.7%, 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 July delays on LAS to SFO?
July is the weakest month at 39.9% on time, compared with 83.3% in March. Across the year that is 43 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
- SFO to LAS — the return legseparate record
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Alaska Airlines on LAS to SFO63.3%
- United Airlines on LAS to SFO62.6%
- Frontier Airlines on LAS to SFO59.4%
- Southwest Airlines on LAS to SFO42.4%
- LAS to LAX, a related route77.9%
- LAX to SFO, a related route60.1%
- LAS to DEN, a related route76.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record63.3%
- United Airlines on-time record62.6%
- 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 SFO and SFO 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.