Carrier route record
WNTPA→LAS
Southwest Airlines · Tampa to Las Vegas
- Flights
- 687
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 66%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on TPA 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 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 687 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on TPA to LAS from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 684 completed flights
Avg delay
48 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.44%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.3%
Every carrier on TPA to LAS, 1,034 flights
These figures cover 687 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 TPA to LAS
Southwest flew 687 of the 1,034 flights on TPA to LAS, most of the route. Its 80.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 80.8% to Frontier at 79.1%. Two 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 230 | 80.8% | 85 min | 0.43% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 687 | 80.3% | 48 min | 0.44% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 117 | 79.1% | 65 min | 1.71% | B |
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 37 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–8am234 flights94.8%
- 8am–11am151 flights90.1%
- 11am–2pm23 flights—
- 2pm–5pm129 flights69.8%
- 5pm–8pm146 flights57.6%
- 8pm–5am4 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.6% on time, against 94.8% for the 5am–8am 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 234 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on TPA to LAS through the year
Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 73.8%. August is the strongest month at 89.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 16 points. May was the busiest month here, with 87 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.6%. 21 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 43% of the 6,540 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 26%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
43% 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 6,540 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 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 6,540 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 94.8% 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.1% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 1,984 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 64.1% on time across 686 flights, 16 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 16 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 687 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 Southwest on TPA to LAS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 687 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 80.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 684 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to LAS, every carrier
- Southwest on LAS to TPA, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on TPA to LAS80.8%
- Frontier Airlines on TPA to LAS79.1%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.