Carrier route record

NKSAT→LAS

Spirit Airlines · San Antonio to Las Vegas

Flights: 210
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 10%
Carriers: 3

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

Spirit on SAT to LAS lands a B+, 6 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 close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 210 flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Spirit's SAT to LAS record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 61 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 209 completed flights

Avg delay

103 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.48%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

81.5%

Every carrier on SAT to LAS, 2,059 flights

These figures cover 210 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 15 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 SAT to LAS

Spirit flew 210 of the 2,059 flights on SAT to LAS, about 10% of it. Its 83.7% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 83.7% to Frontier at 79.4%. 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 SAT to LAS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	210	83.7%	103 min	0.48%	B+
Southwest Airlines	1,571	81.6%	53 min	0.38%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	278	79.4%	68 min	1.44%	B

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 25 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–8am46 flights91.3%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm10 flights—
2pm–5pm34 flights97.1%
5pm–8pm46 flights71.7%
8pm–5am74 flights79.5%

Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 97.1% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 71.7%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 74 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on SAT to LAS through the year

Jul–Sep 202597 flights79.2%
Oct–Dec 2025107 flights87.9%
Jan–Mar 20266 flights—

Scale runs 70% 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 83.7% on time across 210 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on SAT to LAS logged 97 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 107 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 6 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 83.7% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 91.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 66.7%. 25 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. National Airspace System accounts for 49% of the 3,513 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.

National Airspace System
49%
Late-arriving aircraft
32%
Carrier
19%

49% 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 1,732 minutes out of 3,513, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 3,513 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.48%, 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

6.7% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,069 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The return leg runs 82.5% on time across 212 flights, within about a point 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. 210 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 SAT to LAS

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 210 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 83.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 209 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