Route reliability record
DFW→SJC
Dallas-Fort Worth to San Jose
- Flights
- 1,136
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,438 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,136 DFW to SJC flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to SJC: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 76.3%, against 71.0% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 66 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,110 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.20%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
70.9% on time across 1,108 flights
These figures cover 1,136 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.8% 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
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to SJC
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 28 | 75.0% | 42 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 1,108 | 70.9% | 66 min | 2.26% | C |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas-Fort Worth to San Jose
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 → SFODallas-Fort Worth to San Francisco | United Airlines | 71.2% | 71.8% | 0.82% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. DFW → SJCDallas-Fort Worth to San Jose | American Airlines | 69.3% | 70.9% | 2.26% | 8am–11am, Tue (route) | — |
| 3. DFW → SFODallas-Fort Worth to San Francisco | American Airlines | 57.7% | 59.3% | 2.74% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 1949 07:00 |
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 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–8am6 flights—
- 8am–11am376 flights81.4%
- 11am–2pm278 flights66.4%
- 2pm–5pm91 flights68.1%
- 5pm–8pm216 flights69.6%
- 8pm–5am169 flights57.8%
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.8% on time, against 81.4% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 376 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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.
August is the worst month at 58.4% on time, 21 points below November, the best at 79.8%. 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 129 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 76.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 66.1%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 21,000 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 12%Extreme weather
- 8%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 21,128 reported delay minutes.
44% 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 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 sit at 2.20% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.8% 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 1,438 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 80.7% on time across 1,138 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,136 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 SJC 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. November runs 79.8% on time and August 58.4%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,110 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to SJC questions
How often is DFW to SJC 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 29.0% of the 1,136 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to SJC compared with the rest of the country?
71.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 7 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to SJC?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 81.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 57.8%, 24 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 August delays on DFW to SJC?
August is the weakest month at 58.4% on time, compared with 79.8% in November. Across the year that is 21 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
- SJC to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International (SJC) delay statistics
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- SAN to SJC, a related route77.6%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record75.0%
- American Airlines on-time record70.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. DFW to SJC and SJC to DFW are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed DFW to SJC’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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.