Carrier route record

ASDFW→SAN

Alaska Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to San Diego

Flights: 140
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 4%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.

Alaska on DFW to SAN earns a D+, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 56.8% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 21 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average a little over an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 140 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Alaska on DFW to SAN runs 21 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 208 extra late arrivals.

On time

56.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 139 completed flights

Avg delay

71 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.71%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

63.5%

Every carrier on DFW to SAN, 3,608 flights

These figures cover 140 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.5% 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

Alaska against every carrier on DFW to SAN

Alaska flew 140 of the 3,608 flights on DFW to SAN, about 4% of it. Its 56.8% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 63.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 63.8% to Alaska at 56.8%. One 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.

On-time performance by carrier on DFW to SAN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlines	3,214	63.8%	67 min	3.02%	D−
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	254	63.7%	85 min	2.76%	D
Alaska Airlines (this page)thin sample	140	56.8%	71 min	0.71%	D+

Departure window

When Alaska runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 15 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–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm28 flights—
2pm–5pm42 flights59.5%
5pm–8pm70 flights44.9%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 35% to 65%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 44.9% on time, against 59.5% for the 2pm–5pm 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 70 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Alaska on DFW to SAN through the year

Apr–Jun 2026140 flights56.8%

Scale runs 50% to 60%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 56.8% on time across 140 flights.

Split by quarter, Alaska on DFW to SAN logged 140 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 56.8% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 4,256 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Late-arriving aircraft
45%
National Airspace System
24%
Extreme weather
20%
Carrier
10%

Extreme weather accounts for 20% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 4,256 reported delay minutes.

45% 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 4,256 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 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.

Cancellations are rare at 0.71%, below the national 1.81% 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 costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.5% 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.

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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.5% on time across 140 flights, 25 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 25 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 140 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 Alaska on DFW to SAN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 140 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 56.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 139 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures