Route reliability record
SAN→FAT
San Diego to Fresno
- Flights
- 1,747
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 314 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,747 SAN to FAT flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 512 at 80.2% on time.
Best time to fly SAN to FAT: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 86.2%, against 78.9% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,715 completed flights
Avg delay
46 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.77%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
80.2% on time across 512 flights
These figures cover 1,747 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 SAN to FAT
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 512 | 80.2% | 44 min | 1.17% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,235 | 78.3% | 47 min | 2.02% | B |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 80.2%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on SAN to FAT
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 San Diego to Fresno
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. SAN → FATSan Diego to Fresno | Southwest Airlines | 79.3% | 80.2% | 1.17% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. SAN → FATSan Diego to Fresno | SkyWest Airlines | 76.7% | 78.3% | 2.02% | 8am–11am, Tue | OO 3491 13:50 |
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 22 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am544 flights90.0%
- 11am–2pm242 flights75.6%
- 2pm–5pm93 flights71.7%
- 5pm–8pm355 flights81.4%
- 8pm–5am513 flights67.9%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.0% of the time, against 67.9% for the overnight window. That is 22 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 544 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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.
August is the worst month at 71.2% on time, 18 points below January, the best at 89.6%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. October was the busiest month here, with 177 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 73.4%. 13 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 60% of the 17,000 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.
- 60%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%National Airspace System
- 17%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
60% 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 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 16,807 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 90.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.77% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.06%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 314 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 76.2% on time across 1,747 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,747 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 FAT 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. January runs 89.6% on time and August 71.2%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,715 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SAN to FAT questions
How often is SAN to FAT delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.1% of the 1,747 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SAN to FAT?
Southwest Airlines leads at 80.2% on time across 512 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 78.3%, 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 SAN to FAT?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 67.9%, 22 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 August delays on SAN to FAT?
August is the weakest month at 71.2% on time, compared with 89.6% in January. Across the year that is 18 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
- FAT to SAN — the return legseparate record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on SAN to FAT80.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on SAN to FAT78.3%
- SAN to SFO, a related route65.0%
- LAS to FAT, a related route78.2%
- SAN to DEN, a related route79.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record80.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record78.3%
- 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. SAN to FAT and FAT to SAN 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.