Carrier route record

WNRNO→SAN

Southwest Airlines · Reno to San Diego

Flights: 924
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 SAN sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 924 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on RNO to SAN runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 64 extra late arrivals.

On time

71.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 917 completed flights

Avg delay

49 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.43%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

72.8%

Every carrier on RNO to SAN, 1,162 flights

These figures cover 924 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on RNO to SAN

Southwest flew 924 of the 1,162 flights on RNO to SAN, most of the route. Its 71.2% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 88.9% to Southwest at 71.2%. Two 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 SAN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	9	88.9%	20 min	0.00%	A+
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	229	78.5%	60 min	4.37%	B−
Southwest Airlines (this page)	924	71.2%	49 min	0.43%	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 51 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–8am267 flights90.2%
8am–11am173 flights76.2%
11am–2pm119 flights63.9%
2pm–5pm210 flights67.3%
5pm–8pm117 flights39.7%
8pm–5am38 flights56.8%

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

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 39.7% on time, against 90.2% 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 267 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on RNO to SAN through the year

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

June is the worst month at 58.9% on time, 24 points below January, the best at 83.1%. 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 96 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 65.6%. 13 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 47% of the 13,000 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
47%
National Airspace System
39%
Carrier
14%
Extreme weather
1%
Security
0%

47% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 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 12,932 reported delay minutes.

39% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 4,996 minutes out of 13,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.43%, 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

6.1% 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 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 488 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 74.2% on time across 924 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 924 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 SAN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 924 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 71.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 917 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