Route reliability record
ELP→SAT
El Paso to San Antonio
- Flights
- 765
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 496 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 765 ELP to SAT flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly ELP to SAT: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 85.7%, against 83.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 58 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 761 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.13%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
83.4% on time across 765 flights
These figures cover 765 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ELP to SAT
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 765 | 83.4% | 55 min | 0.13% | B+ |
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 31 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–8am102 flights95.0%
- 8am–11am172 flights96.5%
- 11am–2pm104 flights84.5%
- 2pm–5pm161 flights73.9%
- 5pm–8pm96 flights86.3%
- 8pm–5am130 flights65.9%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 96.5% of the time, against 65.9% for the overnight window. That is 31 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 172 flights scheduled in it.
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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 94.5% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. July was the busiest month here, with 84 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 80.7%. 5 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 75% of the 6,948 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.
- 75%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 4%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
75% 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 6,948 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 75 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 6,948 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 96.5% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.13%, 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 actually costs
5.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 496 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.8% on time across 765 flights, 4 points below 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 765 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 SAT after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 765 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 83.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 761 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ELP to SAT questions
How often is ELP to SAT delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.6% of the 765 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ELP to SAT compared with the rest of the country?
83.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 6 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ELP to SAT?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 96.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 65.9%, 31 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 March delays on ELP to SAT?
March is the weakest month at 70.4% on time, compared with 94.5% in September. 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 ELP — the return legseparate record
- San Antonio International (SAT) delay statistics
- ELP to DFW, a related route77.9%
- DFW to SAT, a related route67.0%
- ELP to PHX, a related route81.1%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record83.4%
- 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. ELP to SAT and SAT to ELP 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.