Route reliability record
SNA→LAS
Santa Ana to Las Vegas
- Flights
- 4,386
- Period
- June 2025 to May 2026
- Distance
- 226 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.4%. About one flight in six arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 4,386 flights, of which Spirit Airlines flew 890 at 88.9% on time.
Spirit Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 88.9% on time across 890 flights.
Key figures
On time
83.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,355 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.71%
National rate is 1.80%
Best carrier
Spirit
88.9% on time across 890 flights
These figures cover 4,386 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. The median arrival is 8 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
Which airline is most reliable on SNA to LAS
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Spirit Airlines arrives on time 88.9% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 81.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,500 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines | 890 | 88.9% | 80 min | 1.46% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines | 786 | 85.8% | 103 min | 0.76% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 2,500 | 81.3% | 55 min | 0.40% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 210 | 74.0% | 75 min | 0.95% | C+ |
Spirit leads Southwest by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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 21 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am680 flights95.9%
- 8am–11am791 flights88.3%
- 11am–2pm751 flights83.5%
- 2pm–5pm715 flights74.5%
- 5pm–8pm940 flights80.5%
- 8pm–5am509 flights75.6%
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 95.9% of the time, against 74.5% for the afternoon window. That is 21 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 4,386 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
Delays peak in September, when the on-time rate falls to 77.7%. January is the strongest month at 89.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 11 points.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 91.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 77.1%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 49,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 29%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
35% 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 49,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 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 95.9% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.71%, below the national 1.80% 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
5.9% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.2%. 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 are the about an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 226 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 runs 82.2% on time across 4,387 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.
The sample behind these figures is 4,386 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: take the 5am–8am departure, avoid September if the dates are flexible, and if two carriers are within a few dollars of each other, Spirit is the one with the record behind it. None of that guarantees an on-time arrival; it moves the odds by 21 points, which is the most any booking decision can do.
Common questions
SNA to LAS questions
How often is SNA to LAS delayed?
About one flight in six arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.7% of the 4,386 flights in this analysis, against 22.6% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SNA to LAS?
Spirit Airlines leads at 88.9% on time across 890 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 81.3%, a gap of 8 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SNA to LAS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.9% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 74.5%, 21 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 September delays on SNA to LAS?
September is the weakest month at 77.7% on time, compared with 89.0% in January. Across the year that is 11 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 SNA — the return legseparate record
- John Wayne Airport (SNA) delay statistics
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- Spirit Airlines on-time record88.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record85.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record81.3%
- 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. SNA to LAS and LAS to SNA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, June 2025 to May 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.