Carrier route record

ASSAN→DFW

Alaska Airlines · San Diego to Dallas-Fort Worth

Flights: 140
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 4%
Carriers: 3

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

Alaska on SAN to DFW lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 140 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Alaska on SAN to DFW from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

81.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 135 completed flights

Avg delay

50 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.71%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

77.5%

Every carrier on SAN to DFW, 3,606 flights

These figures cover 140 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

Alaska against every carrier on SAN to DFW

Alaska flew 140 of the 3,606 flights on SAN to DFW, about 4% of it. Its 81.5% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 81.5% to American at 77.2%. 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 SAN to DFW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Alaska Airlines (this page)thin sample	140	81.5%	50 min	0.71%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	254	78.9%	69 min	1.97%	B
American Airlines	3,212	77.2%	87 min	3.08%	B−

Departure window

When Alaska 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 140 flights.

5am–8am28 flights—
8am–11am42 flights85.7%
11am–2pm49 flights79.5%
2pm–5pm21 flights—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% 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 79.5% on time against 85.7% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 49 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Alaska on SAN to DFW through the year

Apr–Jun 2026140 flights81.5%

Scale runs 75% to 85%. 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 81.5% on time across 140 flights.

Split by quarter, Alaska on SAN to DFW logged 140 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 81.5% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 63% of the 1,242 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.

National Airspace System
63%
Late-arriving aircraft
21%
Carrier
16%

63% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 777 minutes out of 1,242, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 1,242 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.71%, 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 costs

7.4% 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 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,171 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 56.8% on time across 140 flights, 25 points below 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 25 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 140 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 Alaska on SAN to DFW

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 140 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 81.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 135 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