Route reliability record

LAS→SNA

Las Vegas to Santa Ana

Flights: 4,252
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 226 mi
Carriers: 4

This route lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 4,252 flights, of which Spirit Airlines flew 780 at 87.5% on time.

Spirit Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 87.5% on time across 780 flights.

On time

81.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,215 completed flights

Avg delay

56 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.73%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

Spirit

87.5% on time across 780 flights

These figures cover 4,252 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

Which airline is most reliable on LAS to SNA

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Spirit Airlines arrives on time 87.5% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 78.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,498 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on LAS to SNA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlines	780	87.5%	71 min	1.54%	A
SkyWest Airlines	760	86.7%	81 min	0.66%	A+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	214	81.7%	61 min	0.47%	B+
Southwest Airlines	2,498	78.8%	48 min	0.52%	B+

Spirit leads Southwest by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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 19 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am314 flights93.5%
8am–11am937 flights86.3%
11am–2pm728 flights82.5%
2pm–5pm785 flights77.3%
5pm–8pm843 flights74.4%
8pm–5am645 flights85.0%

Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.5% of the time, against 74.4% for the evening window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 937 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 14 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.

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

June is the worst month at 75.2% on time, 14 points below January, the best at 89.1%. 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 415 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 87.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 77.8%. 10 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. Carrier accounts for 43% of the 42,000 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.

Carrier
43%
Late-arriving aircraft
37%
National Airspace System
17%
Extreme weather
3%
Security
0%

37% 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 42,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 42,350 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 18,000 of the 42,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.73%, 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

At 226 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 runs 83.0% on time across 4,252 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

The sample behind these figures is 4,252 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 this route

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 89.1% on time and June 75.2%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 4,215 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

LAS to SNA questions

How often is LAS to SNA delayed?

About one flight in six arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.1% of the 4,252 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.

Which airline is most reliable on LAS to SNA?

Spirit Airlines leads at 87.5% on time across 780 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 78.8%, a gap of 9 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 SNA?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 74.4%, 19 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 June delays on LAS to SNA?

June is the weakest month at 75.2% on time, compared with 89.1% in January. Across the year that is 14 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

Direction matters. LAS to SNA and SNA to LAS are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures