Carrier route record

F9LAS→SNA

Frontier Airlines · Las Vegas to Santa Ana

Flights: 214
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 5%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.

Frontier on LAS to SNA lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 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 214 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, 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

81.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 213 completed flights

Avg delay

61 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.47%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

81.9%

Every carrier on LAS to SNA, 4,252 flights

These figures cover 214 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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

Frontier against every carrier on LAS to SNA

Frontier flew 214 of the 4,252 flights on LAS to SNA, about 5% of it. Its 81.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 81.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 87.5% to Southwest at 78.8%.

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 Airlines (this page)thin 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

When Frontier runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 18 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am6 flights—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm70 flights91.4%
2pm–5pm55 flights80.0%
5pm–8pm83 flights73.2%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 91.4% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 73.2%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 83 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on LAS to SNA through the year

Jul–Sep 202556 flights69.6%
Oct–Dec 202549 flights79.6%
Jan–Mar 202652 flights86.5%
Apr–Jun 202657 flights91.1%

Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 81.7% on time across 214 flights.

Frontier on LAS to SNA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 91.1% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 69.6%, a swing of 22 points on roughly 54 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 88.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 78.0%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 66% of the 2,385 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
66%
Carrier
26%
National Airspace System
8%
Extreme weather
1%

66% 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 2,385 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 66 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 2,385 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.47%, 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 costs

7.0% 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 an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.0% on time across 213 flights, 7 points below 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 7 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 214 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking Frontier on LAS to SNA

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 214 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 81.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 213 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures