Route reliability record
PHL→LAS
Philadelphia to Las Vegas
- Flights
- 1,489
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,177 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,489 PHL to LAS flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly PHL to LAS: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Monday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.9% of the time and Monday flights 79.2%, against 75.4% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,458 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.75%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
75.3% on time across 1,293 flights
These figures cover 1,489 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% 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
Which airline is most reliable on PHL to LAS
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 82 | 81.5% | 68 min | 1.22% | B |
| American Airlines | 1,293 | 75.3% | 75 min | 1.78% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 114 | 72.1% | 103 min | 1.75% | C |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am71 flights73.5%
- 8am–11am467 flights85.9%
- 11am–2pm41 flights65.9%
- 2pm–5pm350 flights72.7%
- 5pm–8pm371 flights69.7%
- 8pm–5am189 flights68.1%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 65.9% on time against 85.9% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 467 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
July is the worst month at 58.3% on time, 26 points below May, the best at 84.2%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 162 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 79.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.4%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 28,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, 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 11,000 of the 28,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 27,609 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 85.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.75% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.34%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 2,177 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 83.2% on time across 1,494 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,489 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in LAS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 84.2% on time and July 58.3%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,458 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PHL to LAS questions
How often is PHL to LAS delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 24.6% of the 1,489 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is PHL to LAS compared with the rest of the country?
75.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 2 points against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PHL to LAS?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 85.9% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 65.9%, 20 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are July delays on PHL to LAS?
July is the weakest month at 58.3% on time, compared with 84.2% in May. Across the year that is 26 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- LAS to PHL — the return legseparate record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- American Airlines on PHL to LAS75.3%
- Frontier Airlines on PHL to LAS72.1%
- PHL to ATL, a related route79.2%
- LAX to LAS, a related route76.5%
- PHL to MCO, a related route72.4%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record81.5%
- American Airlines on-time record75.3%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record72.1%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. PHL to LAS and LAS to PHL are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.