Route reliability record
DFW→SAT
Dallas-Fort Worth to San Antonio
- Flights
- 4,375
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 247 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 4,375 DFW to SAT flights, of which Envoy Air flew 526 at 79.5% on time.
Best time to fly DFW to SAT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 73.3%, against 67.8% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 95 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,245 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.83%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
79.5% on time across 526 flights
These figures cover 4,375 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to SAT
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 79.5% of the time; American Airlines manages 64.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 3,531 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 313 | 84.9% | 72 min | 2.24% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 80.0% | 15 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Envoy Air | 526 | 79.5% | 52 min | 2.47% | B |
| American Airlines | 3,531 | 64.5% | 81 min | 2.95% | D |
The spread between Envoy and American is 15 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 15 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to SAT
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas-Fort Worth 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. 1 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 30 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am335 flights83.6%
- 8am–11am801 flights82.0%
- 11am–2pm624 flights73.2%
- 2pm–5pm756 flights67.8%
- 5pm–8pm850 flights60.7%
- 8pm–5am1,009 flights53.7%
Scale runs 45% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 53.7% on time, against 83.6% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 1,009 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW 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 DFW to SAT, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 83.6% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 53.7%, a wide gap of 29.9 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am83.6%
- 8–11am82.0%
- 11am–2pm73.2%
- 2–5pm67.8%
- 5–8pm60.7%
- 8pm–5am53.7%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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 55.0% on time, 24 points below February, the best at 79.3%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 390 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 73.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.7%, a spread of 14 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 107,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 107,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 107,285 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 83.6% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.83%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
13.0% 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.
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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.4% on time across 4,374 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 4,375 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 delay figures matter less here than the 2.83% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 4,245 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to SAT questions
How often is DFW to SAT delayed?
About 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 32.2% of the 4,375 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to SAT?
Envoy Air leads at 79.5% on time across 526 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 64.5%, a gap of 15 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to SAT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 83.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 53.7%, 30 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 SAT?
June is the weakest month at 55.0% on time, compared with 79.3% in February. Across the year that is 24 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 DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- San Antonio International (SAT) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on DFW to SAT84.9%
- Envoy Air on DFW to SAT79.5%
- American Airlines on DFW to SAT64.5%
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- DEN to SAT, a related route76.8%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record84.9%
- PSA Airlines on-time record80.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record79.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to SAT and SAT to DFW are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed DFW to SAT’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.