Route reliability record
LAX→SAT
Los Angeles to San Antonio
- Flights
- 1,881
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,211 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B+, 5 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 1,881 LAX to SAT flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 697 at 86.0% on time.
Best time to fly LAX to SAT: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 85.7%, against 82.1% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 45 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,869 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.48%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
86.0% on time across 697 flights
These figures cover 1,881 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 LAX to SAT
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 | 697 | 86.0% | 67 min | 0.29% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 163 | 85.4% | 85 min | 2.45% | A |
| Delta Air Lines | 684 | 84.1% | 77 min | 0.44% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 337 | 68.5% | 43 min | 0.00% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 86.0%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on LAX 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Los Angeles to San Antonio
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. LAX → SATLos Angeles to San Antonio | SkyWest Airlines | 85.8% | 86.0% | 0.29% | 8am–11am, Fri | OO 4962 18:21 |
| 2. LAX → SATLos Angeles to San Antonio | Delta Air Lines | 83.7% | 84.1% | 0.44% | 8am–11am, Wed | DL 2686 18:59 |
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 19 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am11 flights—
- 8am–11am922 flights86.4%
- 11am–2pm129 flights70.5%
- 2pm–5pm136 flights67.2%
- 5pm–8pm683 flights81.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 86.4% of the time, against 67.2% for the afternoon window. That is 19 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 922 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.
October is the best month on the calendar at 91.6% 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 186 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.6%. 12 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. Carrier accounts for 50% 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.
- 50%Carrier
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
41% 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 41 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 21,245 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, 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 11,000 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.48%, 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
6.4% 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.
The 1,211 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 86.6% on time across 1,881 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,881 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 calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 91.6% on time and May 74.5%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 1,869 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAX to SAT questions
How often is LAX 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 17.9% of the 1,881 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LAX to SAT?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 86.0% on time across 697 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 84.1%, 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 LAX to SAT?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 86.4% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 67.2%, 19 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 May delays on LAX to SAT?
May is the weakest month at 74.5% on time, compared with 91.6% in October. 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
- SAT to LAX — the return legseparate record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- San Antonio International (SAT) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on LAX to SAT86.0%
- Spirit Airlines on LAX to SAT85.4%
- Delta Air Lines on LAX to SAT84.1%
- Southwest Airlines on LAX to SAT68.5%
- LAX to SFO, a related route64.8%
- DFW to SAT, a related route67.0%
- LAX to JFK, a related route79.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record86.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record85.4%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record84.1%
- 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. LAX to SAT and SAT to LAX 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.