Route reliability record
DAL→SAT
Dallas to San Antonio
- Flights
- 2,755
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 247 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 2,755 DAL to SAT flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly DAL to SAT: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 82.7%, against 76.7% 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
76.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,722 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.09%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
76.7% on time across 2,755 flights
These figures cover 2,755 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 DAL to SAT
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 | 2,755 | 76.7% | 59 min | 1.09% | B |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas to San Antonio
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DFW → SATDallas-Fort Worth to San Antonio | Envoy Air | 77.5% | 79.5% | 2.47% | 2pm–5pm, Fri | — |
| 2. DAL → SATDallas to San Antonio | Southwest Airlines | 75.9% | 76.7% | 1.09% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 3. DFW → SATDallas-Fort Worth to San Antonio | American Airlines | 62.6% | 64.5% | 2.95% | 5am–8am, Wed | AA 1836 07:05 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 45 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am372 flights95.4%
- 8am–11am483 flights95.6%
- 11am–2pm594 flights81.4%
- 2pm–5pm435 flights73.6%
- 5pm–8pm447 flights62.9%
- 8pm–5am424 flights50.1%
Scale runs 40% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 50.1% on time, against 95.6% for the 8am–11am 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 594 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DAL to SAT 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 DAL to SAT, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 95.6% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 50.1%, a wide gap of 45.5 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am95.4%
- 8–11am95.6%
- 11am–2pm81.4%
- 2–5pm73.6%
- 5–8pm62.9%
- 8pm–5am50.1%
best all US flightsScale 40% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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 57.5% on time, 29 points below October, the best at 86.6%. 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 254 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.0%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 60% of the 36,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 60%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
60% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 36,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 37 to one. The split is drawn from 36,471 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 95.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.09% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.2% 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.
At 247 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.4% on time across 2,740 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,755 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 SAT 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. October runs 86.6% on time and June 57.5%, a swing of 29 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,722 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DAL to SAT questions
How often is DAL to SAT delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.3% of the 2,755 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DAL to SAT compared with the rest of the country?
76.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of half a point against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DAL to SAT?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 95.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 50.1%, 45 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 DAL to SAT?
June is the weakest month at 57.5% on time, compared with 86.6% in October. Across the year that is 29 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
- SAT to DAL — the return legseparate record
- Dallas Love Field (DAL) delay statistics
- San Antonio International (SAT) delay statistics
- DAL to HOU, a related route74.8%
- DFW to SAT, a related route67.8%
- DAL to ATL, a related route78.1%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record76.7%
- 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. DAL to SAT and SAT to DAL 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.