Carrier route record

WNRNO→LAX

Southwest Airlines · Reno to Los Angeles

Flights: 343
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 14%
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 LAX lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five 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 343 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on RNO to LAX from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

78.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 337 completed flights

Avg delay

57 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.75%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

87.3%

Every carrier on RNO to LAX, 2,494 flights

These figures cover 343 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 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 LAX

Southwest flew 343 of the 2,494 flights on RNO to LAX, about 14% of it. Its 78.6% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 87.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 88.8% to Southwest at 78.6%. 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 LAX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	2,037	88.8%	69 min	0.29%	A+
United Airlinesthin sample	114	86.0%	41 min	0.00%	A+
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	343	78.6%	57 min	1.75%	B

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 38 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–8am8 flights—
8am–11am98 flights90.4%
11am–2pm138 flights81.0%
2pm–5pm29 flights—
5pm–8pm54 flights52.8%
8pm–5am16 flights—

Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 52.8% on time, against 90.4% for the 8am–11am 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 138 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on RNO to LAX through the year

Jul–Sep 2025112 flights78.6%
Oct–Dec 202587 flights80.5%
Jan–Mar 202683 flights91.5%
Apr–Jun 202661 flights59.0%

Scale runs 50% 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 78.6% on time across 343 flights.

Southwest on RNO to LAX did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 91.5% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 59.0%, a swing of 33 points on roughly 86 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 93.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 68.6%. 25 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 50% of the 4,090 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
50%
Carrier
27%
National Airspace System
20%
Extreme weather
4%

50% 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 4,090 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 4,090 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 90.4% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.75% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.5% 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 390 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.7% on time across 343 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 343 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 RNO to LAX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 343 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 78.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 337 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