Carrier route record

WNMSP→LAS

Southwest Airlines · Minneapolis to Las Vegas

Flights: 167
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 8%
Carriers: 3

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

Southwest on MSP to LAS earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 12 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 50 minutes. That rests on 167 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's MSP to LAS record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 116 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

89.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 166 completed flights

Avg delay

52 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.60%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

81.7%

Every carrier on MSP to LAS, 2,188 flights

These figures cover 167 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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.

Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on MSP to LAS

Southwest flew 167 of the 2,188 flights on MSP to LAS, about 8% of it. Its 89.2% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 89.2% to Frontier at 71.4%. 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 MSP to LAS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	167	89.2%	52 min	0.60%	A+
Delta Air Lines	2,007	81.1%	62 min	1.05%	B
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	14	71.4%	34 min	0.00%	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 167 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Southwest's MSP to LAS record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 89.2% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Southwest on MSP to LAS through the year

Jul–Sep 202575 flights89.3%
Oct–Dec 202558 flights87.7%
Jan–Mar 202633 flights90.9%
Apr–Jun 20261 flights—

Scale runs 80% to 95%. 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 89.2% on time across 167 flights.

Quarter by quarter Southwest on MSP to LAS held fairly steady: 89.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 87.7% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 90.9% in Jan–Mar 2026. A spread of 3 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 93.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 84.8%. 9 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. Carrier accounts for 50% of the 933 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
50%
National Airspace System
20%
Late-arriving aircraft
17%
Extreme weather
13%

Extreme weather accounts for 13% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 933 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, 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 469 of the 933 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.60%, 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

The 1,299 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 67.7% on time across 167 flights, 22 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 22 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 167 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 MSP to LAS

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 167 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 89.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 166 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