Route reliability record
DFW→SJU
Dallas-Fort Worth to San Juan
- Flights
- 989
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,165 mi
- Carriers
- 3
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, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 989 DFW to SJU flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
Best time to fly DFW to SJU: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 82.4% of the time and Thursday flights 77.5%, against 69.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 81 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 963 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.53%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
67.7% on time across 702 flights
These figures cover 989 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 SJU
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 | 250 | 76.2% | 103 min | 4.40% | B− |
| American Airlines | 702 | 67.7% | 62 min | 1.57% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 37 | 58.8% | 58 min | 8.11% | D− |
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to SJU
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.
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 26 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–8am99 flights81.1%
- 8am–11am329 flights82.4%
- 11am–2pm40 flights77.5%
- 2pm–5pm89 flights60.5%
- 5pm–8pm226 flights56.5%
- 8pm–5am206 flights60.2%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.5% on time, against 82.4% 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 329 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 41 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 48.3% on time, 41 points below September, the best at 89.7%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 113 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 77.5% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 62.1%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 20,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
34% 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 20,000 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. The split is drawn from 20,476 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 8,571 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.53%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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
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.
At 2,165 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.7% on time across 993 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 989 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in SJU after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 989 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 69.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 963 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to SJU questions
How often is DFW to SJU 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 30.5% of the 989 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to SJU compared with the rest of the country?
69.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 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 SJU?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 82.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 56.5%, 26 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 SJU?
June is the weakest month at 48.3% on time, compared with 89.7% in September. Across the year that is 41 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
- SJU to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Luis Munoz Marin International (SJU) delay statistics
- Spirit Airlines on DFW to SJU76.2%
- American Airlines on DFW to SJU67.7%
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- MCO to SJU, a related route73.0%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record76.2%
- American Airlines on-time record67.7%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record58.8%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to SJU and SJU 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.