Carrier route record
WNTUL→LAS
Southwest Airlines · Tulsa to Las Vegas
- Flights
- 635
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 85%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on TUL to LAS lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 635 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's TUL to LAS record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 58 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 632 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.47%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.3%
Every carrier on TUL to LAS, 744 flights
These figures cover 635 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 TUL to LAS
Southwest flew 635 of the 744 flights on TUL to LAS, most of the route. Its 83.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 83.4% to Allegiant at 75.7%. One 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 635 | 83.4% | 56 min | 0.47% | B+ |
| Allegiant Airthin sample | 109 | 75.7% | 75 min | 1.83% | 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 33 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–8am324 flights94.4%
- 8am–11am1 flights—
- 11am–2pm65 flights82.8%
- 2pm–5pm57 flights80.4%
- 5pm–8pm97 flights69.1%
- 8pm–5am91 flights61.5%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.5% on time, against 94.4% 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 324 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on TUL to LAS through the year
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 71.4%. March is the strongest month at 94.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 23 points. July was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 94.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 75.8%. 18 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 52% of the 5,921 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
52% 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 5,921 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 5,921 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 94.4% on time here.
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
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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,076 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 75.6% on time across 635 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 635 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 TUL to LAS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 635 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 83.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 632 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TUL to LAS, every carrier
- Southwest on LAS to TUL, the return leg
- Allegiant Air on TUL to LAS75.7%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- 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.