Carrier route record
ASLAS→SFO
Alaska Airlines · Las Vegas to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,116
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 18%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on LAS to SFO draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,116 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,756 at 67.5% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 67.5% on time across 2,756 flights.
Key figures
On time
66.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,104 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.08%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
62.8%
Every carrier on LAS to SFO, 6,060 flights
These figures cover 1,116 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% 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
Alaska against every carrier on LAS to SFO
Alaska flew 1,116 of the 6,060 flights on LAS to SFO, about 18% of it. Its 66.5% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 62.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 100.0% to Southwest at 48.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 67.5% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 48.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,310 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+ |
| United Airlines | 2,756 | 67.5% | 61 min | 0.44% | C+ |
| Alaska Airlines (this page) | 1,116 | 66.5% | 52 min | 1.08% | C |
| Frontier Airlines | 875 | 64.3% | 70 min | 1.37% | D |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,310 | 48.8% | 54 min | 0.38% | F+ |
The spread between United and Southwest is 19 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 19 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Alaska flight numbers on LAS to SFO
Departure window
When Alaska runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 40 points, against 19 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am220 flights85.3%
- 8am–11am126 flights50.0%
- 11am–2pm149 flights78.9%
- 2pm–5pm295 flights64.8%
- 5pm–8pm72 flights45.8%
- 8pm–5am254 flights58.9%
Scale runs 35% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 45.8% on time, against 85.3% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 295 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Alaska on LAS to SFO through the year
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 38.8%. March is the strongest month at 88.2%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 49 points. March was the busiest month here, with 111 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 75.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 62.6%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Alaska runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 55% of the 19,000 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.
- 55%National Airspace System
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 11%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
55% 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 11,000 minutes out of 19,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 19,360 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 85.3% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.08% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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 76.5% on time across 1,116 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,116 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 Alaska on LAS to SFO
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. March runs 88.2% on time and May 38.8%, a swing of 49 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 1,104 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAS to SFO, every carrier
- Alaska on SFO to LAS, the return leg
- United Airlines on LAS to SFO67.5%
- Frontier Airlines on LAS to SFO64.3%
- Southwest Airlines on LAS to SFO48.8%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.