Route reliability record
ABQ→AUS
Albuquerque to Austin
- Flights
- 842
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 619 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 842 ABQ to AUS flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly ABQ to AUS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.0% of the time and Saturday flights 89.2%, against 78.4% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 838 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.36%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
78.4% on time across 842 flights
These figures cover 842 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ABQ to AUS
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 | 842 | 78.4% | 58 min | 0.36% | 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 37 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am324 flights95.0%
- 8am–11am62 flights88.7%
- 11am–2pm87 flights75.9%
- 2pm–5pm155 flights63.0%
- 5pm–8pm118 flights65.3%
- 8pm–5am96 flights58.5%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.5% on time, against 95.0% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 324 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ABQ to AUS 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 ABQ to AUS, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 95.0% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 58.5%, a wide gap of 36.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am95.0%
- 8–11am88.7%
- 11am–2pm75.9%
- 2–5pm63.0%
- 5–8pm65.3%
- 8pm–5am58.5%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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 62.7% on time, 26 points below September, the best at 88.3%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 91 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 89.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 73.9%, a spread of 15 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 62% of the 10,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 62%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
62% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 62 to one. The split is drawn from 10,457 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 95.0% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.36%, 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
6.8% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 619 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.0% on time across 842 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 842 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in AUS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 842 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 78.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 838 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ABQ to AUS questions
How often is ABQ to AUS delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.6% of the 842 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ABQ to AUS compared with the rest of the country?
78.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of about a point in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ABQ to AUS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 58.5%, 37 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 ABQ to AUS?
June is the weakest month at 62.7% on time, compared with 88.3% in September. Across the year that is 26 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
- AUS to ABQ — the return legseparate record
- Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- ABQ to PHX, a related route81.8%
- DEN to AUS, a related route76.2%
- ABQ to DEN, a related route82.3%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record78.4%
- 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. ABQ to AUS and AUS to ABQ 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.