Carrier route record
AALAX→LAS
American Airlines · Los Angeles to Las Vegas
- Flights
- 1,064
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 13%
- Carriers
- 8
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on LAX to LAS 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 an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 1,064 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Spirit Airlines, flew 640 at 84.9% on time.
Spirit Airlines is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 84.9% on time across 640 flights.
Key figures
On time
68.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,055 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.85%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.5%
Every carrier on LAX to LAS, 8,319 flights
These figures cover 1,064 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on LAX to LAS
American flew 1,064 of the 8,319 flights on LAX to LAS, about 13% of it. Its 68.5% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number seven of eight carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 87.3% to Alaska at 64.7%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Spirit Airlines arrives on time 84.9% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 70.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 594 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 311 | 87.3% | 49 min | 1.61% | A |
| Spirit Airlines | 640 | 84.9% | 76 min | 0.94% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 1,572 | 83.6% | 58 min | 0.51% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,735 | 78.5% | 59 min | 0.81% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 2,386 | 72.2% | 53 min | 0.59% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 594 | 70.0% | 79 min | 1.35% | C |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,064 | 68.5% | 87 min | 0.85% | C+ |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 17 | 64.7% | 28 min | 0.00% | D+ |
The spread between Spirit and Frontier is 15 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 15 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on LAX to LAS
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 14 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am303 flights73.8%
- 11am–2pm246 flights61.5%
- 2pm–5pm66 flights69.7%
- 5pm–8pm374 flights67.2%
- 8pm–5am74 flights75.7%
Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 61.5% on time against 75.7% for 8pm–5am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 374 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on LAX to LAS through the year
June is the worst month at 59.2% on time, 20 points below February, the best at 78.9%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 111 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 62.7%. 20 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 29,000 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.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
55% 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 29,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 55 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 28,959 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.85%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 236 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 8pm–5am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.3% on time across 1,060 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,064 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 American on LAX to LAS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,064 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 68.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,055 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to LAS, every carrier
- American on LAS to LAX, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on LAX to LAS87.3%
- Spirit Airlines on LAX to LAS84.9%
- United Airlines on LAX to LAS83.6%
- Delta Air Lines on LAX to LAS78.5%
- Southwest Airlines on LAX to LAS72.2%
- Frontier Airlines on LAX to LAS70.0%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.