Carrier route record
DLLAX→SAT
Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to San Antonio
- Flights
- 679
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 37%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on LAX to SAT earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 679 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's LAX to SAT record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 86 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 676 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.29%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
81.6%
Every carrier on LAX to SAT, 1,814 flights
These figures cover 679 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on LAX to SAT
Delta flew 679 of the 1,814 flights on LAX to SAT, about 37% of it. Its 85.9% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.9% to Southwest at 65.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 697 | 85.9% | 68 min | 0.29% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 679 | 85.9% | 74 min | 0.29% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 101 | 79.4% | 93 min | 3.96% | B− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 337 | 65.0% | 40 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on LAX to SAT
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 679 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am361 flights88.8%
- 11am–2pm4 flights—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm314 flights82.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 88.8% on time for the 8am–11am window against 82.8% for 5pm–8pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 361 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on LAX to SAT through the year
January is the weak month at 80.4% on time, against 93.1% in March. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. October was the busiest month here, with 61 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.8%, a spread of 14 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on LAX to SAT runs when it is late
Delta on LAX to SAT often beats the schedule: 227 of 676 completed flights, 34%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 95 late arrivals split 35 under half an hour, 21 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 39 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early227 flights33.6%
- Within 15 min354 flights52.4%
- 15–29 min late35 flights5.2%
- 30–59 min late21 flights3.1%
- 1–2 hours late18 flights2.7%
- 2+ hours late21 flights3.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 676 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
17 of 95 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. 17 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on LAX to SAT
The latest arrival of the period was on 2 January 2026, 6 hours 6 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 2 January 2026 | 6 hours 6 minutes | Carrier |
| 1 October 2025 | 4 hours 58 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 11 November 2025 | 3 hours 32 minutes | Carrier |
| 9 November 2025 | 3 hours 22 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 June 2026 | 3 hours 19 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 47% of the 7,030 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Carrier
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%National Airspace System
45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,030 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 45 to one. The split is drawn from 7,030 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 47%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,309 of the 7,030 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.29%, below the national 1.89% 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 costs
5.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over 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.
The return leg runs 88.8% on time across 679 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 679 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.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on LAX to SAT
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 679 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 85.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 676 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to SAT, every carrier
- Delta on SAT to LAX, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on LAX to SAT85.9%
- Spirit Airlines on LAX to SAT79.4%
- Southwest Airlines on LAX to SAT65.0%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- San Antonio International (SAT) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.