Carrier route record

NKSAN→LAS

Spirit Airlines · San Diego to Las Vegas

Flights: 258
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 4%
Carriers: 4

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

Spirit on SAN to LAS earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 258 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 1,491 at 78.9% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Spirit's SAN to LAS record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 66 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 253 completed flights

Avg delay

65 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.94%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.6%

Every carrier on SAN to LAS, 5,868 flights

These figures cover 258 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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

Spirit against every carrier on SAN to LAS

Spirit flew 258 of the 5,868 flights on SAN to LAS, about 4% of it. Its 84.2% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 84.2% to Frontier at 66.6%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 78.9% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 66.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 389 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on SAN to LAS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin 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	389	66.6%	95 min	2.06%	C

The spread between SkyWest and Frontier is 12 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 12 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

Departure window

When Spirit runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 26 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am95 flights95.8%
8am–11am14 flights—
11am–2pm44 flights85.4%
2pm–5pm11 flights—
5pm–8pm84 flights70.2%
8pm–5am10 flights—

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 95.8% of the time, against 70.2% for the evening window. That is 26 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 95 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on SAN to LAS through the year

Jul–Sep 2025250 flights83.7%
Oct–Dec 20258 flights—

Scale runs 75% to 90%. 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 84.2% on time across 258 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on SAN to LAS logged 250 flights in Jul–Sep 2025 and 8 flights in Oct–Dec 2025. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 84.2% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 94.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.6%. 26 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 2,582 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
52%
National Airspace System
31%
Carrier
18%

52% 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 2,582 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 52 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 2,582 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 95.8% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.94% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.1% 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 an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

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

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.7% on time across 257 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 258 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 Spirit on SAN to LAS

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 258 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 84.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 253 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