Route reliability record
SBA→LAS
Santa Barbara to Las Vegas
- Flights
- 890
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 289 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 890 SBA to LAS flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly SBA to LAS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 92.5%, against 86.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 94 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 884 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.56%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
86.7% on time across 890 flights
These figures cover 890 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SBA to LAS
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 890 | 86.7% | 64 min | 0.56% | A+ |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 24 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am365 flights95.3%
- 8am–11am151 flights89.3%
- 11am–2pm53 flights81.1%
- 2pm–5pm268 flights77.4%
- 5pm–8pm53 flights71.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.3% of the time, against 71.7% for the evening window. That is 24 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SBA to LAS by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On SBA to LAS, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 95.3% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 71.7%, a wide gap of 23.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am95.3%
- 8–11am89.3%
- 11am–2pm81.1%
- 2–5pm77.4%
- 5–8pm71.7%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
August is the worst month at 75.7% on time, 22 points below July, the best at 97.4%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 83 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 92.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 82.2%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 7,571 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,571 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 to one. The split is drawn from 7,571 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 95.3% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.56%, below the national 1.89% 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 289 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 76.9% on time across 890 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 890 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in LAS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 890 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 86.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 884 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SBA to LAS questions
How often is SBA to LAS delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 13.3% of the 890 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is SBA to LAS compared with the rest of the country?
86.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 9 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SBA to LAS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 71.7%, 24 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are August delays on SBA to LAS?
August is the weakest month at 75.7% on time, compared with 97.4% in July. Across the year that is 22 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- LAS to SBA — the return legseparate record
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- SBA to SFO, a related route61.3%
- LAX to LAS, a related route75.8%
- SBA to PHX, a related route85.7%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record86.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. SBA to LAS and LAS to SBA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed SBA to LAS’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.