Carrier route record

WNLAX→TPA

Southwest Airlines · Los Angeles to Tampa

Flights: 177
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 15%
Carriers: 3

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

Southwest on LAX to TPA draws a D+. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 177 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Southwest on LAX to TPA runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 159 extra late arrivals.

On time

61.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 176 completed flights

Avg delay

48 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

78.8%

Every carrier on LAX to TPA, 1,164 flights

These figures cover 177 flights between September 2025 and August 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.

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Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on LAX to TPA

Southwest flew 177 of the 1,164 flights on LAX to TPA, about 15% of it. Its 61.4% on time is 17 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 88.7% to Southwest at 61.4%. One 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.

On-time performance by carrier on LAX to TPA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlinesthin sample	327	88.7%	50 min	0.31%	A+
Delta Air Lines	660	78.6%	53 min	1.52%	B
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	177	61.4%	48 min	0.00%	D+

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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 14 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am39 flights69.2%
8am–11am13 flights—
11am–2pm50 flights60.0%
2pm–5pm75 flights55.4%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 45% 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 55.4% for the afternoon window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 75 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%
Jul–Sep 202634 flights67.6%

Scale runs 50% to 75%.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 61.4% on time across 177 flights.

Quarter by quarter Southwest on LAX to TPA held fairly steady: 62.7% in Jan–Mar 2026, 58.2% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 67.6% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Arrival by arrival

How late Southwest on LAX to TPA runs when it is late

Most of the lateness is short. 40 of the 68 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 11 reached an hour or more.

15+ min early7 flights4.0%
Within 15 min101 flights57.4%
15–29 min late40 flights22.7%
30–59 min late17 flights9.7%
1–2 hours late4 flights2.3%
2+ hours late7 flights4.0%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 176 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

A late pushback is often recovered here: of 80 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 25 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 13 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at TPA.

The worst days

Worst days for Southwest on LAX to TPA

The latest arrival of the period was on 1 August 2026, 6 hours 10 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The five worst days are spread across August, July, May, March and June, with no single month standing out.

The latest arrivals of Southwest on LAX to TPA in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
1 August 2026	6 hours 10 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
26 July 2026	3 hours 41 minutes	Carrier
3 May 2026	3 hours 11 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
16 March 2026	2 hours 56 minutes	National Airspace System
15 June 2026	2 hours 49 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

Carrier accounts for 49% of the 3,249 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
49%
Late-arriving aircraft
38%
National Airspace System
13%

38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,249 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 38 to one. The split is drawn from 3,249 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,586 of the 3,249 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% 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

6.2% 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 50 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 72.3% on time across 177 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 177 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. 177 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 61.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 176 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures