Carrier route record

WNRNO→LAS

Southwest Airlines · Reno to Las Vegas

Flights: 3,213
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 80%
Carriers: 3

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

Southwest on RNO to LAS lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 3,213 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's RNO to LAS record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 46 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,192 completed flights

Avg delay

57 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.56%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.1%

Every carrier on RNO to LAS, 4,019 flights

These figures cover 3,213 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on RNO to LAS

Southwest flew 3,213 of the 4,019 flights on RNO to LAS, most of the route. Its 82.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 87.4% to Frontier at 70.2%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on RNO to LAS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlines	542	87.4%	82 min	2.21%	A
Southwest Airlines (this page)	3,213	82.2%	57 min	0.56%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	264	70.2%	98 min	2.27%	C

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 28 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–8am668 flights96.9%
8am–11am633 flights89.6%
11am–2pm535 flights82.1%
2pm–5pm566 flights72.1%
5pm–8pm516 flights68.9%
8pm–5am295 flights76.0%

Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.9% of the time, against 68.9% for the evening window. That is 28 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 668 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on RNO to LAS through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.January best, July worst

July is the worst month at 76.4% on time, 14 points below January, the best at 90.2%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 329 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 88.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 77.7%. 11 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 57% of the 32,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
57%
National Airspace System
25%
Carrier
15%
Extreme weather
3%

57% 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 32,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 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 32,016 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 96.9% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.56%, 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

5.4% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 345 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.5% on time across 3,215 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 3,213 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.

What to do with this

Booking Southwest on RNO to LAS

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 90.2% on time and July 76.4%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,192 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