Route reliability record
LAS→TPA
Las Vegas to Tampa
- Flights
- 1,036
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,984 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 55 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,036 LAS to TPA flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.
Best time to fly LAS to TPA: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 77.9% of the time and Saturday flights 74.8%, against 68.6% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 90 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,028 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.58%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
64.1% on time across 686 flights
These figures cover 1,036 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on LAS to TPA
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 232 | 84.8% | 84 min | 0.86% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 686 | 64.1% | 49 min | 0.15% | D+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 118 | 62.6% | 64 min | 2.54% | D |
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 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am80 flights72.2%
- 8am–11am240 flights77.9%
- 11am–2pm102 flights70.6%
- 2pm–5pm219 flights58.0%
- 5pm–8pm153 flights57.6%
- 8pm–5am242 flights73.8%
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.6% on time, against 77.9% for the 8am–11am 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 242 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 84.3% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. May was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 74.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 64.4%. 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 54% of the 18,000 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.
- 54%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 54%, 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 9,434 of the 18,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 17,572 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 77.9% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.58%, 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
7.3% 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 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,984 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.3% on time across 1,034 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,036 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in TPA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,036 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 68.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,028 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAS to TPA questions
How often is LAS to TPA delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 31.4% of the 1,036 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 55 minutes on average.
How reliable is LAS to TPA compared with the rest of the country?
68.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 9 points against it. That is worth a C+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LAS to TPA?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 77.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 57.6%, 20 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 May delays on LAS to TPA?
May is the weakest month at 55.1% on time, compared with 84.3% in September. Across the year that is 29 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
- TPA to LAS — the return legseparate record
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Spirit Airlines on LAS to TPA84.8%
- Southwest Airlines on LAS to TPA64.1%
- Frontier Airlines on LAS to TPA62.6%
- LAS to LAX, a related route78.8%
- ATL to TPA, a related route73.3%
- LAS to DEN, a related route77.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record84.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record64.1%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record62.6%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. LAS to TPA and TPA 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.