Carrier route record
WNLAX→MCI
Southwest Airlines · Los Angeles to Kansas City
- Flights
- 560
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 42%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on LAX to MCI sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land roughly 55 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 560 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Southwest on LAX to MCI runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 61 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 555 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.89%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
82.3%
Every carrier on LAX to MCI, 1,349 flights
These figures cover 560 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on LAX to MCI
Southwest flew 560 of the 1,349 flights on LAX to MCI, about 42% of it. Its 71.2% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 82.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 94.3% to Southwest at 71.2%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 141 | 94.3% | 30 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 616 | 89.7% | 78 min | 0.49% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 32 | 83.9% | 88 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 560 | 71.2% | 54 min | 0.89% | C+ |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 51 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am117 flights93.9%
- 8am–11am190 flights83.6%
- 11am–2pm55 flights76.4%
- 2pm–5pm81 flights46.9%
- 5pm–8pm75 flights43.2%
- 8pm–5am42 flights42.9%
Scale runs 35% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 42.9% on time, against 93.9% 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 190 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on LAX to MCI through the year
June is the worst month at 53.7% on time, 34 points below October, the best at 87.2%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 71 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 60.4%, a spread of 25 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on LAX to MCI runs when it is late
The 160 late arrivals split 63 under half an hour, 48 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 49 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early70 flights12.6%
- Within 15 min325 flights58.6%
- 15–29 min late63 flights11.4%
- 30–59 min late48 flights8.6%
- 1–2 hours late34 flights6.1%
- 2+ hours late15 flights2.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 555 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
41 of 184 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. 17 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on LAX to MCI
The latest arrival of the period was on 21 August 2026, 5 hours 58 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 21 August 2026 | 5 hours 58 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 November 2025 | 3 hours 40 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 26 October 2025 | 3 hours 11 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 December 2025 | 3 hours 5 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 26 March 2026 | 2 hours 44 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 8,597 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 1%Security
58% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,597 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 58 to one. The split is drawn from 8,597 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 93.9% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.89%, 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 costs
8.8% 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 roughly 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,363 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.
The return leg runs 69.0% on time across 548 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 560 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 MCI
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 560 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 71.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 555 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to MCI, every carrier
- Southwest on MCI to LAX, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on LAX to MCI94.3%
- Delta Air Lines on LAX to MCI89.7%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.