Carrier route record

WNLAX→LAS

Southwest Airlines · Los Angeles to Las Vegas

Flights: 2,386
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 29%
Carriers: 8

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

Southwest 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, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 55 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 2,386 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.

On time

72.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,372 completed flights

Avg delay

53 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.59%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

76.5%

Every carrier on LAX to LAS, 8,319 flights

These figures cover 2,386 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% 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

Southwest against every carrier on LAX to LAS

Southwest flew 2,386 of the 8,319 flights on LAX to LAS, about 29% of it. Its 72.2% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five 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; American Airlines manages 68.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,064 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on LAX to LAS
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 (this page)	2,386	72.2%	53 min	0.59%	C+
Frontier Airlines	594	70.0%	79 min	1.35%	C
American Airlines	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 American is 16 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 16 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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 40 points, against 16 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am361 flights95.0%
8am–11am493 flights88.8%
11am–2pm342 flights67.3%
2pm–5pm414 flights63.4%
5pm–8pm394 flights55.2%
8pm–5am382 flights60.7%

Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.2% on time, against 95.0% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 493 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on LAX to LAS through the year

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

June is the worst month at 53.1% on time, 29 points below January, the best at 81.7%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 220 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 77.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 64.2%. 14 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 52% of the 35,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
52%
National Airspace System
27%
Carrier
21%
Extreme weather
0%

52% 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 35,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 52 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 35,151 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 95.0% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.59%, 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

8.2% 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 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 68.2% on time across 2,386 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 2,386 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.

What to do with this

Booking Southwest on LAX to LAS

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 81.7% on time and June 53.1%, a swing of 29 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,372 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