Carrier route record
WNSAN→FAT
Southwest Airlines · San Diego to Fresno
- Flights
- 627
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 34%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on SAN to FAT lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 45 minutes on average. That rests on 627 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Southwest on SAN to FAT from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 620 completed flights
Avg delay
45 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.12%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
77.8%
Every carrier on SAN to FAT, 1,818 flights
These figures cover 627 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 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
Southwest against every carrier on SAN to FAT
Southwest flew 627 of the 1,818 flights on SAN to FAT, about 34% of it. Its 79.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 77.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 79.2% to SkyWest at 77.1%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 627 | 79.2% | 45 min | 1.12% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,191 | 77.1% | 48 min | 2.52% | B |
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 Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 42 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am288 flights97.2%
- 11am–2pm7 flights—
- 2pm–5pm5 flights—
- 5pm–8pm82 flights85.2%
- 8pm–5am245 flights55.0%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.0% on time, against 97.2% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 288 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on SAN to FAT through the year
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 70.9%. January is the strongest month at 90.9%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 20 points. December was the busiest month here, with 60 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.4%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on SAN to FAT runs when it is late
Southwest on SAN to FAT often beats the schedule: 278 of 620 completed flights, 45%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 129 late arrivals split 46 under half an hour, 54 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 29 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early278 flights44.8%
- Within 15 min213 flights34.4%
- 15–29 min late46 flights7.4%
- 30–59 min late54 flights8.7%
- 1–2 hours late27 flights4.4%
- 2+ hours late2 flights0.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 620 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 189 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 62 still arrived on time. Only 2 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on SAN to FAT
The latest arrival of the period was on 20 November 2025, 2 hours 50 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 20 November 2025 | 2 hours 50 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 April 2026 | 2 hours | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 May 2026 | 1 hour 55 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 August 2026 | 1 hour 53 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 April 2026 | 1 hour 49 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 85% of the 5,827 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 85%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%Carrier
- 2%National Airspace System
85% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 5,827 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 85 to one. The split is drawn from 5,827 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 97.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.12% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.9% on time across 627 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 627 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 Southwest on SAN to FAT
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 627 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 79.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 620 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SAN to FAT, every carrier
- Southwest on FAT to SAN, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on SAN to FAT77.1%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.