Carrier route record
WNLAS→TPA
Southwest Airlines · Las Vegas to Tampa
- Flights
- 686
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 66%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on LAS to TPA draws a D+. 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 686 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on LAS to TPA runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 135 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 683 completed flights
Avg delay
49 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.15%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.6%
Every carrier on LAS to TPA, 1,036 flights
These figures cover 686 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
Southwest against every carrier on LAS to TPA
Southwest flew 686 of the 1,036 flights on LAS to TPA, most of the route. Its 64.1% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 84.8% to Frontier at 62.6%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 (this page) | 686 | 64.1% | 49 min | 0.15% | D+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 118 | 62.6% | 64 min | 2.54% | D |
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 18 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–11am182 flights75.3%
- 11am–2pm52 flights57.7%
- 2pm–5pm219 flights58.0%
- 5pm–8pm153 flights57.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.6% on time, against 75.3% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 219 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on LAS to TPA through the year
July is the worst month at 52.0% on time, 25 points below January, the best at 76.7%. 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 87 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 71.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 60.8%. 10 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. Carrier accounts for 47% of the 12,000 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.
- 47%Carrier
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
39% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 39 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 11,893 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 47%, 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 5,622 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.15%, 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
7.9% 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 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 687 flights, 16 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 16 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 686 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 Southwest on LAS to TPA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 686 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 64.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 683 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAS to TPA, every carrier
- Southwest on TPA to LAS, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on LAS to TPA84.8%
- Frontier Airlines on LAS to TPA62.6%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) 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.