Route reliability record
DFW→SAN
Dallas-Fort Worth to San Diego
- Flights
- 3,738
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,171 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route draws a D. Roughly 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 3,738 DFW to SAN flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.
Best time to fly DFW to SAN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 70.2%, against 63.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 140 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,631 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.27%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
63.5% on time across 3,212 flights
These figures cover 3,738 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to SAN
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 262 | 68.2% | 79 min | 1.91% | C |
| American Airlines | 3,212 | 63.5% | 66 min | 2.43% | D |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 264 | 56.9% | 68 min | 0.76% | D+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas-Fort Worth to San Diego
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. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DAL → SANDallas to San Diego | Southwest Airlines | 70.8% | 71.7% | 1.25% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. DFW → SANDallas-Fort Worth to San Diego | American Airlines | 62.0% | 63.5% | 2.43% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 34 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am360 flights84.2%
- 8am–11am374 flights81.2%
- 11am–2pm765 flights62.8%
- 2pm–5pm574 flights60.2%
- 5pm–8pm976 flights59.8%
- 8pm–5am689 flights50.6%
Scale runs 40% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 50.6% on time, against 84.2% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 976 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to SAN 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 DFW to SAN, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 84.2% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 50.6%, a wide gap of 33.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am84.2%
- 8–11am81.2%
- 11am–2pm62.8%
- 2–5pm60.2%
- 5–8pm59.8%
- 8pm–5am50.6%
best all US flightsScale 40% to 95%.
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 48.0% on time, 29 points below March, the best at 76.9%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 397 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 70.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.3%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 90,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 90,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 89,536 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 84.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.27% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.59%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
12.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,171 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 77.6% on time across 3,737 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,738 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 SAN 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. March runs 76.9% on time and June 48.0%, a swing of 29 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 3,631 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to SAN questions
How often is DFW to SAN delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 36.7% of the 3,738 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to SAN compared with the rest of the country?
63.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 14 points against it. That is worth a D on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to SAN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 84.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 50.6%, 34 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 DFW to SAN?
June is the weakest month at 48.0% on time, compared with 76.9% in March. 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
- SAN to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to SAN68.2%
- American Airlines on DFW to SAN63.5%
- Alaska Airlines on DFW to SAN56.9%
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- SFO to SAN, a related route62.2%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record68.2%
- American Airlines on-time record63.5%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record56.9%
- 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. DFW to SAN and SAN to DFW 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.