Route reliability record
TUS→LAS
Tucson to Las Vegas
- Flights
- 1,319
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 364 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,319 TUS to LAS flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly TUS to LAS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 97.5% of the time and Wednesday flights 90.1%, against 84.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 71 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,315 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.23%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
84.9% on time across 1,240 flights
These figures cover 1,319 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on TUS to LAS
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 | 1,240 | 84.9% | 65 min | 0.16% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 79 | 76.9% | 125 min | 1.27% | B |
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Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 35 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am325 flights97.5%
- 8am–11am204 flights91.7%
- 11am–2pm240 flights86.7%
- 2pm–5pm206 flights73.5%
- 5pm–8pm245 flights76.6%
- 8pm–5am99 flights62.6%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 62.6% on time, against 97.5% 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 325 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter TUS to LAS by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On TUS to LAS, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 97.5% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 62.6%, a wide gap of 34.9 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am97.5%
- 8–11am91.7%
- 11am–2pm86.7%
- 2–5pm73.5%
- 5–8pm76.6%
- 8pm–5am62.6%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 13 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
June is the worst month at 78.2% on time, 13 points below January, the best at 91.1%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 127 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 80.1%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 14,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 14%Carrier
- 10%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
54% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 14,297 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 97.5% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.23%, below the national 1.89% 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 actually costs
5.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 364 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.6% on time across 1,320 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,319 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in LAS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 91.1% on time and June 78.2%, a swing of 13 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,315 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TUS to LAS questions
How often is TUS to LAS delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.6% of the 1,319 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is TUS to LAS compared with the rest of the country?
84.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on TUS to LAS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 97.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 62.6%, 35 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are June delays on TUS to LAS?
June is the weakest month at 78.2% on time, compared with 91.1% in January. Across the year that is 13 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- LAS to TUS — the return legseparate record
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- TUS to PHX, a related route83.6%
- LAX to LAS, a related route75.8%
- TUS to DEN, a related route83.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record84.9%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record76.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. TUS to LAS and LAS to TUS are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.