Carrier route record

OOOAK→SAN

SkyWest Airlines · Oakland to San Diego

Flights: 207
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 6%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on OAK to SAN sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 207 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on OAK to SAN runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 90 extra late arrivals.

On time

68.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 204 completed flights

Avg delay

51 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.45%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

66.9%

Every carrier on OAK to SAN, 3,201 flights

These figures cover 207 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

SkyWest against every carrier on OAK to SAN

SkyWest flew 207 of the 3,201 flights on OAK to SAN, about 6% of it. Its 68.6% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 66.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 78.2% to Southwest at 66.6%. One 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.

On-time performance by carrier on OAK to SAN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	55	78.2%	63 min	0.00%	B+
SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample	207	68.6%	51 min	1.45%	C
Southwest Airlines	2,939	66.6%	49 min	0.95%	C+

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 32 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–8am49 flights95.7%
8am–11am22 flights—
11am–2pm24 flights—
2pm–5pm71 flights63.4%
5pm–8pm13 flights—
8pm–5am28 flights—

Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.7% of the time, against 63.4% for the afternoon window. That is 32 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 71 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on OAK to SAN through the year

Oct–Dec 20251 flights—
Apr–Jun 2026206 flights69.0%

Scale runs 60% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 68.6% on time across 207 flights.

Split by quarter, SkyWest on OAK to SAN logged 1 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 206 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 68.6% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 80.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 46.9%. 33 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

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 3,271 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
38%
National Airspace System
32%
Carrier
29%
Extreme weather
2%

38% 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 3,271 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 22 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 3,271 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 95.7% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.45% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here 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 446 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.6% on time across 200 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 207 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 SkyWest on OAK to SAN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 207 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 68.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 204 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures