Carrier route record
WNMCI→AUS
Southwest Airlines · Kansas City to Austin
- Flights
- 896
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 85%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on MCI to AUS lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 896 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Southwest on MCI to AUS from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 888 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.45%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
81.0%
Every carrier on MCI to AUS, 1,050 flights
These figures cover 896 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on MCI to AUS
Southwest flew 896 of the 1,050 flights on MCI to AUS, most of the route. Its 80.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 81.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.7% to Southwest at 80.2%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 154 | 85.7% | 141 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 896 | 80.2% | 55 min | 0.45% | B+ |
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 36 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am299 flights96.6%
- 8am–11am78 flights84.6%
- 11am–2pm143 flights78.0%
- 2pm–5pm114 flights74.6%
- 5pm–8pm217 flights64.0%
- 8pm–5am45 flights60.5%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 60.5% on time, against 96.6% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 299 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on MCI to AUS through the year
June is the worst month at 68.7% on time, 25 points below February, the best at 93.2%. 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 88 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.3%, a spread of 21 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on MCI to AUS runs when it is late
Southwest on MCI to AUS often beats the schedule: 290 of 888 completed flights, 33%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 176 late arrivals split 58 under half an hour, 63 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 55 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early290 flights32.7%
- Within 15 min422 flights47.5%
- 15–29 min late58 flights6.5%
- 30–59 min late63 flights7.1%
- 1–2 hours late38 flights4.3%
- 2+ hours late17 flights1.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 888 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
56 of 217 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 26% of them. Only 15 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on MCI to AUS
The latest arrival of the period was on 3 May 2026, 4 hours 53 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 3 May 2026 | 4 hours 53 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 August 2026 | 3 hours 44 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 March 2026 | 3 hours 14 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 12 June 2026 | 3 hours 7 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 May 2026 | 2 hours 45 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 66% of the 9,740 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 66%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
66% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 9,740 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 21 to one. The split is drawn from 9,740 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 96.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.45%, 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
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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 650 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.5% on time across 895 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 896 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 MCI to AUS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 896 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 80.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 888 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCI to AUS, every carrier
- Southwest on AUS to MCI, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on MCI to AUS85.7%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) 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.