Carrier route record

F9SAN→AUS

Frontier Airlines · San Diego to Austin

Flights: 123
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 5%
Carriers: 3

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

Frontier on SAN to AUS sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 123 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 1,000 at 80.1% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on SAN to AUS runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 74 extra late arrivals.

On time

70.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 121 completed flights

Avg delay

48 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.63%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

73.0%

Every carrier on SAN to AUS, 2,552 flights

These figures cover 123 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 2 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

Frontier against every carrier on SAN to AUS

Frontier flew 123 of the 2,552 flights on SAN to AUS, about 5% of it. Its 70.2% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 80.1% to Southwest at 68.2%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 80.1% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 68.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,429 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on SAN to AUS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	1,000	80.1%	62 min	1.30%	B
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	123	70.2%	48 min	1.63%	C
Southwest Airlines	1,429	68.2%	50 min	0.56%	C+

SkyWest leads Southwest by 12 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Departure window

When Frontier runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 39 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am44 flights83.7%
11am–2pm31 flights45.2%
2pm–5pm36 flights82.9%
5pm–8pm12 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 35% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 45.2% on time against 83.7% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 44 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on SAN to AUS through the year

Jul–Sep 202546 flights84.4%
Oct–Dec 202544 flights56.8%
Jan–Mar 202629 flights—
Apr–Jun 20264 flights—

Scale runs 50% to 90%. 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 70.2% on time across 123 flights.

Split by quarter, Frontier on SAN to AUS logged 46 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 44 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 29 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 4 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 70.2% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 1,743 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
59%
National Airspace System
22%
Carrier
18%

59% 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 1,743 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 59 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 1,743 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 83.7% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.63% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.6% 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 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,164 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 73.3% on time across 123 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 123 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 Frontier on SAN to AUS

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 123 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 70.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 121 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