Route reliability record
LAS→TUS
Las Vegas to Tucson
- Flights
- 1,320
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 364 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,320 LAS to TUS flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly LAS to TUS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.6% of the time and Saturday flights 83.7%, against 75.6% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,312 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.61%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
75.1% on time across 1,241 flights
These figures cover 1,320 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on LAS to TUS
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 79 | 84.4% | 72 min | 2.53% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,241 | 75.1% | 50 min | 0.48% | B+ |
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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 31 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am163 flights92.6%
- 8am–11am243 flights89.3%
- 11am–2pm137 flights74.3%
- 2pm–5pm293 flights74.7%
- 5pm–8pm218 flights66.5%
- 8pm–5am266 flights61.7%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.7% on time, against 92.6% for the 5am–8am 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 293 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LAS to TUS by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On LAS to TUS, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.6% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 61.7%, a wide gap of 30.9 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.6%
- 8–11am89.3%
- 11am–2pm74.3%
- 2–5pm74.7%
- 5–8pm66.5%
- 8pm–5am61.7%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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.
June is the worst month at 62.8% on time, 21 points below January, the best at 83.8%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 128 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 83.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.2%, a spread of 14 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 60% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 60%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
60% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 60 to one. The split is drawn from 16,153 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.61%, below the national 1.89% 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
5.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 364 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.4% on time across 1,319 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,320 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in TUS after this flight
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 83.8% on time and June 62.8%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,312 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAS to TUS questions
How often is LAS to TUS delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 24.4% of the 1,320 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is LAS to TUS compared with the rest of the country?
75.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 2 points against it. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LAS to TUS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 61.7%, 31 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 TUS?
June is the weakest month at 62.8% on time, compared with 83.8% in January. Across the year that is 21 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
- TUS to LAS — the return legseparate record
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- LAS to LAX, a related route77.9%
- PHX to TUS, a related route81.0%
- LAS to DEN, a related route76.5%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record84.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record75.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. LAS to TUS and TUS 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.