Carrier route record
WNLAX→TUS
Southwest Airlines · Los Angeles to Tucson
- Flights
- 466
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 18%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on LAX to TUS 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 roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 466 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on LAX to TUS runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 94 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 465 completed flights
Avg delay
49 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.21%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.4%
Every carrier on LAX to TUS, 2,580 flights
These figures cover 466 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% 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 TUS
Southwest flew 466 of the 2,580 flights on LAX to TUS, about 18% of it. Its 68.2% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 83.1% to Southwest at 68.2%.
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 Airlines | 2,114 | 83.1% | 84 min | 0.43% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 466 | 68.2% | 49 min | 0.21% | C+ |
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 466 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am94 flights67.7%
- 11am–2pm53 flights67.9%
- 2pm–5pm154 flights72.7%
- 5pm–8pm58 flights63.8%
- 8pm–5am107 flights64.5%
Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.8% on time, against 72.7% for the 2pm–5pm 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 154 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on LAX to TUS through the year
June is the worst month at 44.2% on time, 47 points below January, the best at 91.2%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 48 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 79.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 60.0%. 19 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 71% of the 7,207 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.
- 71%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
71% 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 7,207 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 71 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 7,207 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.21%, 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
8.4% 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 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 451 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 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.2% on time across 466 flights, 15 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 15 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 466 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 TUS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 466 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 68.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 465 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to TUS, every carrier
- Southwest on TUS to LAX, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on LAX to TUS83.1%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.