Carrier route record
WNTPA→SJU
Southwest Airlines · Tampa to San Juan
- Flights
- 471
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 32%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on TPA to SJU draws a C+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about 50 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 471 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on TPA to SJU runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 109 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 469 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.42%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.8%
Every carrier on TPA to SJU, 1,478 flights
These figures cover 471 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.5% 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
Southwest against every carrier on TPA to SJU
Southwest flew 471 of the 1,478 flights on TPA to SJU, about 32% of it. Its 66.7% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 81.8% to Southwest at 66.7%. 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 | 51 | 81.8% | 34 min | 13.73% | B− |
| JetBlue Airways | 614 | 78.9% | 72 min | 0.81% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 342 | 73.4% | 112 min | 2.34% | C |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 471 | 66.7% | 50 min | 0.42% | C+ |
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 59 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–8am84 flights94.0%
- 8am–11am27 flights—
- 11am–2pm180 flights74.4%
- 2pm–5pm30 flights—
- 5pm–8pm48 flights52.1%
- 8pm–5am102 flights35.3%
Scale runs 25% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 35.3% on time, against 94.0% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 180 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on TPA to SJU through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 86.7% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. July was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 50.8%. 30 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 55% of the 7,823 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.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
55% 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 7,823 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 7,823 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 94.0% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.42%, 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
8.5% 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 about 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,237 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.4% on time across 470 flights, 16 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 16 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 471 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 SJU
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 471 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 66.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 469 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to SJU, every carrier
- Southwest on SJU to TPA, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on TPA to SJU78.9%
- Frontier Airlines on TPA to SJU73.4%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Luis Munoz Marin International (SJU) 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.