Route reliability record
FAT→SAN
Fresno to San Diego
- Flights
- 1,747
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 314 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,747 FAT to SAN flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,235 at 76.7% on time.
Best time to fly FAT to SAN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 81.0%, against 76.2% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,715 completed flights
Avg delay
53 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.26%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
76.7% on time across 1,235 flights
These figures cover 1,747 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 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 FAT to SAN
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,235 | 76.7% | 53 min | 1.62% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 512 | 75.0% | 54 min | 0.39% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 76.7%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on FAT to SAN
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Fresno to San Diego
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. FAT → SANFresno to San Diego | SkyWest Airlines | 75.5% | 76.7% | 1.62% | 5am–8am, Wed | OO 3402 06:00 |
| 2. FAT → SANFresno to San Diego | Southwest Airlines | 74.7% | 75.0% | 0.39% | 5am–8am, Sun | — |
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 44 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am562 flights92.2%
- 8am–11am396 flights74.1%
- 11am–2pm95 flights78.9%
- 2pm–5pm380 flights72.3%
- 5pm–8pm252 flights48.0%
- 8pm–5am62 flights79.3%
Scale runs 40% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 48.0% on time, against 92.2% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 562 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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 67.8% on time, 17 points below February, the best at 84.6%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 178 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 70.4%. 11 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 22,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%National Airspace System
- 26%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
37% 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 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 21,783 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 92.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.26% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.57%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.2% 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 roughly 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 314 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 runs 78.9% on time across 1,747 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,747 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 SAN 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. February runs 84.6% on time and June 67.8%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,715 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FAT to SAN questions
How often is FAT to SAN delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.8% of the 1,747 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on FAT to SAN?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 76.7% on time across 1,235 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 75.0%, a gap of 2 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 FAT to SAN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 48.0%, 44 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 FAT to SAN?
June is the weakest month at 67.8% on time, compared with 84.6% in February. Across the year that is 17 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
- SAN to FAT — the return legseparate record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on FAT to SAN76.7%
- Southwest Airlines on FAT to SAN75.0%
- FAT to LAS, a related route82.2%
- SFO to SAN, a related route66.6%
- FAT to PHX, a related route81.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record76.7%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record75.0%
- 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. FAT to SAN and SAN to FAT 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.