Carrier route record

WNLAX→ABQ

Southwest Airlines · Los Angeles to Albuquerque

Flights: 480
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 22%
Carriers: 2

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

Southwest on LAX to ABQ lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 40 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 480 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's LAX to ABQ record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 49 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 479 completed flights

Avg delay

40 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.21%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

86.0%

Every carrier on LAX to ABQ, 2,198 flights

These figures cover 480 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 LAX to ABQ

Southwest flew 480 of the 2,198 flights on LAX to ABQ, about 22% of it. Its 82.5% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 86.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 87.0% to Southwest at 82.5%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on LAX to ABQ
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	1,718	87.0%	75 min	0.29%	A+
Southwest Airlines (this page)	480	82.5%	40 min	0.21%	B+

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 34 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–8am79 flights89.7%
8am–11am131 flights92.4%
11am–2pm116 flights86.2%
2pm–5pm65 flights78.5%
5pm–8pm29 flights—
8pm–5am60 flights58.3%

Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.3% on time, against 92.4% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 131 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on LAX to ABQ through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.July best, June worst

June is the worst month at 61.7% on time, 32 points below July, the best at 93.5%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 48 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.5% on time and Thursday the weakest at 76.9%. 16 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 61% of the 3,315 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
61%
Carrier
32%
National Airspace System
6%

61% 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 3,315 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 61 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 3,315 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 92.4% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.21%, 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.5% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

The 677 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.4% on time across 480 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 480 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 LAX to ABQ

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 480 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 82.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 479 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