Carrier route record
WNLAS→SNA
Southwest Airlines · Las Vegas to Santa Ana
- Flights
- 2,498
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 59%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on LAS to SNA lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,498 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Spirit Airlines, flew 780 at 87.5% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on LAS to SNA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,480 completed flights
Avg delay
48 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.52%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.9%
Every carrier on LAS to SNA, 4,252 flights
These figures cover 2,498 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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
Southwest against every carrier on LAS to SNA
Southwest flew 2,498 of the 4,252 flights on LAS to SNA, most of the route. Its 78.8% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 81.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 87.5% to Southwest at 78.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| 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 (this page) | 2,498 | 78.8% | 48 min | 0.52% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. Spirit tops the table at 87.5%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 24 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am258 flights93.3%
- 8am–11am486 flights86.0%
- 11am–2pm497 flights79.2%
- 2pm–5pm394 flights69.7%
- 5pm–8pm512 flights70.2%
- 8pm–5am351 flights80.3%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.3% of the time, against 69.7% for the afternoon window. That is 24 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 512 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on LAS to SNA through the year
June is the worst month at 69.5% on time, 19 points below January, the best at 88.5%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 222 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 85.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 74.1%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 25,000 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.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
51% 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 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 49 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 25,060 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 9,585 of the 25,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.52%, 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
5.1% 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 roughly 50 minutes, 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 81.0% on time across 2,498 flights, within 2 points 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 2,498 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 Southwest on LAS to SNA
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 88.5% on time and June 69.5%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,480 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAS to SNA, every carrier
- Southwest on SNA to LAS, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on LAS to SNA87.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on LAS to SNA86.7%
- Frontier Airlines on LAS to SNA81.7%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- John Wayne Airport (SNA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.