Carrier route record
F9SAN→LAS
Frontier Airlines · San Diego to Las Vegas
- Flights
- 389
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 7%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on SAN to LAS draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 389 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 1,491 at 78.9% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on SAN to LAS runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 110 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 380 completed flights
Avg delay
95 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.06%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.6%
Every carrier on SAN to LAS, 5,868 flights
These figures cover 389 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.0% 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
Frontier against every carrier on SAN to LAS
Frontier flew 389 of the 5,868 flights on SAN to LAS, about 7% of it. Its 66.6% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 84.2% to Frontier at 66.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 258 | 84.2% | 65 min | 1.94% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,491 | 78.9% | 70 min | 1.34% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 3,730 | 74.7% | 53 min | 1.21% | C |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 389 | 66.6% | 95 min | 2.06% | C |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 78.9%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Departure window
When Frontier runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 45 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am40 flights81.6%
- 8am–11am70 flights90.0%
- 11am–2pm70 flights45.5%
- 2pm–5pm75 flights66.7%
- 5pm–8pm70 flights59.7%
- 8pm–5am64 flights60.9%
Scale runs 35% to 95%. 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 45.5% on time against 90.0% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 75 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on SAN to LAS through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025141 flights63.0%
- Oct–Dec 202593 flights63.7%
- Jan–Mar 202667 flights81.8%
- Apr–Jun 202688 flights63.6%
Scale runs 55% to 85%. 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 66.6% on time across 389 flights.
Frontier on SAN to LAS did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 81.8% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 63.0%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 97 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 82.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 54.3%. 29 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 65% of the 12,000 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.
- 65%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
65% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 65 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 12,110 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 90.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.06% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.26%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 15.0% 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 258 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 runs 68.2% on time across 389 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 389 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 Frontier on SAN to LAS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 389 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 66.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 380 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SAN to LAS, every carrier
- Frontier on LAS to SAN, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on SAN to LAS84.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on SAN to LAS78.9%
- Southwest Airlines on SAN to LAS74.7%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.