Carrier route record

F9SNA→LAS

Frontier Airlines · Santa Ana to Las Vegas

Flights: 213
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 5%
Carriers: 4

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

Frontier on SNA to LAS sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 213 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Spirit Airlines, flew 781 at 88.5% on time.

Spirit Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 88.5% on time across 781 flights.

On time

75.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 212 completed flights

Avg delay

93 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.47%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.0%

Every carrier on SNA to LAS, 4,252 flights

These figures cover 213 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.8% 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 SNA to LAS

Frontier flew 213 of the 4,252 flights on SNA to LAS, about 5% of it. Its 75.0% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 83.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 88.5% to Frontier at 75.0%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Spirit Airlines arrives on time 88.5% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 81.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,498 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on SNA to LAS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlines	781	88.5%	84 min	1.66%	A
SkyWest Airlines	760	85.9%	98 min	0.79%	A+
Southwest Airlines	2,498	81.0%	53 min	0.44%	B+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	213	75.0%	93 min	0.47%	B+

Spirit leads Southwest by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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 18 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am6 flights—
11am–2pm25 flights—
2pm–5pm55 flights72.7%
5pm–8pm47 flights83.0%
8pm–5am80 flights64.6%

Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 64.6% on time, against 83.0% for the 5pm–8pm slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 80 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on SNA to LAS through the year

Jul–Sep 202555 flights63.6%
Oct–Dec 202549 flights85.7%
Jan–Mar 202652 flights90.4%
Apr–Jun 202657 flights62.5%

Scale runs 55% 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 75.0% on time across 213 flights.

Frontier on SNA to LAS did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 90.4% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 62.5%, a swing of 28 points on roughly 53 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, Monday is the strongest day at 84.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 63.4%. 21 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 66% of the 4,952 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
66%
National Airspace System
32%
Carrier
1%

66% 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 4,952 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 66 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 4,952 reported delay minutes.

32% 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 1,604 minutes out of 4,952, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.47%, 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.8% 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 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.7% on time across 214 flights, 7 points above 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 7 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 213 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 SNA to LAS

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 213 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 75.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 212 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