Carrier route record

WNSNA→LAS

Southwest Airlines · Santa Ana to Las Vegas

Flights: 2,498
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 59%
Carriers: 4

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

Southwest on SNA to LAS lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,498 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Spirit Airlines, flew 781 at 88.5% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on SNA to LAS from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

81.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,487 completed flights

Avg delay

53 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.44%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.0%

Every carrier on SNA to LAS, 4,252 flights

These figures cover 2,498 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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

Southwest against every carrier on SNA to LAS

Southwest flew 2,498 of the 4,252 flights on SNA to LAS, most of the route. Its 81.0% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 83.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 88.5% to Frontier at 75.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.

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 (this page)	2,498	81.0%	53 min	0.44%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	213	75.0%	93 min	0.47%	B+

No carrier stands out. Spirit tops the table at 88.5%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Departure window

When Southwest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 29 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am354 flights96.3%
8am–11am480 flights90.0%
11am–2pm426 flights81.7%
2pm–5pm491 flights72.2%
5pm–8pm521 flights75.7%
8pm–5am226 flights67.7%

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 96.3% of the time, against 67.7% for the overnight window. That is 29 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 521 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on SNA to LAS through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.January best, July worst

July is the worst month at 76.1% on time, 12 points below January, the best at 88.5%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 221 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 90.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 73.4%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 25,000 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
49%
National Airspace System
27%
Carrier
22%
Extreme weather
2%
Security
0%

49% 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 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 24 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 25,154 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 96.3% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.44%, 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

5.9% 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 roughly 55 minutes, 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 78.8% on time across 2,498 flights, within 2 points 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 2,498 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 Southwest on SNA to LAS

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 88.5% on time and July 76.1%, a swing of 12 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,487 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