Carrier route record

WNTPA→LAX

Southwest Airlines · Tampa to Los Angeles

Flights: 143
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 12%
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 LAX sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 40 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 143 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 390 at 89.7% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on TPA to LAX runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 91 extra late arrivals.

On time

68.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 143 completed flights

Avg delay

40 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.5%

Every carrier on TPA to LAX, 1,192 flights

These figures cover 143 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on TPA to LAX

Southwest flew 143 of the 1,192 flights on TPA to LAX, about 12% of it. Its 68.5% on time is 15 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 83.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 89.7% to Southwest at 68.5%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 89.7% of the time; Delta Air Lines manages 83.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 659 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on TPA to LAX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	390	89.7%	70 min	0.26%	A+
Delta Air Lines	659	83.1%	64 min	1.37%	B
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	143	68.5%	40 min	0.00%	C+

United leads Delta by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Departure window

When Southwest runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 143 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am61 flights70.5%
11am–2pm50 flights72.0%
2pm–5pm20 flights—
5pm–8pm12 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 60% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 11am–2pm window is the strongest at 72.0% on time. The full set of windows spans 2 points.

Across the year

Southwest on TPA to LAX through the year

Jan–Mar 202652 flights76.9%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights63.7%

Scale runs 55% to 80%. 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 68.5% on time across 143 flights.

Split by quarter, Southwest on TPA to LAX logged 52 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 91 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 68.5% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 48% of the 1,795 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.

Carrier
48%
Late-arriving aircraft
31%
National Airspace System
21%

The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 862 of the 1,795 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,795 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are 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 4.9% 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 2,158 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 59.9% on time across 143 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 143 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 LAX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 143 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 68.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 143 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