Carrier route record

WNLAX→TPA

Southwest Airlines · Los Angeles to Tampa

Flights: 143
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 12%
Carriers: 3

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

Southwest on LAX to TPA draws a D+. Roughly one flight in two arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about 40 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 143 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 389 at 88.9% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on LAX to TPA runs 18 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 177 extra late arrivals.

On time

59.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 142 completed flights

Avg delay

40 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.7%

Every carrier on LAX to TPA, 1,191 flights

These figures cover 143 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on LAX to TPA

Southwest flew 143 of the 1,191 flights on LAX to TPA, about 12% of it. Its 59.9% on time is 20 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 88.9% to Southwest at 59.9%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 88.9% of the time; Delta Air Lines manages 78.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 659 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on LAX to TPA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	389	88.9%	55 min	0.26%	A+
Delta Air Lines	659	78.6%	57 min	1.52%	B
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	143	59.9%	40 min	0.00%	D+

United leads Delta by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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 24 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am39 flights69.2%
8am–11am13 flights—
11am–2pm50 flights60.0%
2pm–5pm41 flights45.0%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 35% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 69.2% of the time, against 45.0% for the afternoon window. That is 24 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 50 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on LAX to TPA through the year

Jan–Mar 202652 flights62.7%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights58.2%

Scale runs 50% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 59.9% on time across 143 flights.

Split by quarter, Southwest on LAX to TPA logged 52 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 91 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 59.9% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 49% of the 2,254 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.

Carrier
49%
Late-arriving aircraft
34%
National Airspace System
17%

34% 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 2,254 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 34 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 2,254 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,097 of the 2,254 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.6% 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 about 40 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 2,158 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 68.5% on time across 143 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 143 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 TPA

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 143 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 59.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 142 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