Carrier route record
DLAUS→SFO
Delta Air Lines · Austin to San Francisco
- Flights
- 444
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on AUS to SFO draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 444 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Delta on AUS to SFO 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 438 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.13%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.9%
Every carrier on AUS to SFO, 2,795 flights
These figures cover 444 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.2% 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
Delta against every carrier on AUS to SFO
Delta flew 444 of the 2,795 flights on AUS to SFO, about 16% of it. Its 66.7% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 78.8% to Southwest at 62.6%. Three 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,655 | 78.8% | 74 min | 0.79% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 344 | 78.8% | 60 min | 1.16% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 8 | 75.0% | 17 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 444 | 66.7% | 59 min | 1.13% | C |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 344 | 62.6% | 51 min | 0.58% | D+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on AUS to SFO
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 24 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–8am79 flights75.6%
- 8am–11am147 flights64.1%
- 11am–2pm139 flights72.8%
- 2pm–5pm79 flights51.9%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 75.6% of the time, against 51.9% for the afternoon window. That is 24 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 147 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on AUS to SFO through the year
Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 52.1%. March is the strongest month at 86.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 35 points. May was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 74.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.0%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 8,645 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 32%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
34% 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 8,645 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 34 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 8,645 reported delay minutes.
34% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 2,904 minutes out of 8,645, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.13% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.23%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 1,504 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 61.0% on time across 444 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 444 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 Delta on AUS to SFO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 444 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. 438 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- AUS to SFO, every carrier
- Delta on SFO to AUS, the return leg
- United Airlines on AUS to SFO78.8%
- Alaska Airlines on AUS to SFO78.8%
- Southwest Airlines on AUS to SFO62.6%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.