Route reliability record
SAN→OAK
San Diego to Oakland
- Flights
- 3,290
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 446 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 3,290 SAN to OAK flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly SAN to OAK: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 97.5% of the time and Saturday flights 84.7%, against 72.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 44 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,256 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
72.4% on time across 2,933 flights
These figures cover 3,290 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 3 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
Which airline is most reliable on SAN to OAK
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 20 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 337 | 75.6% | 52 min | 1.48% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 2,933 | 72.4% | 50 min | 0.95% | C+ |
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly San Diego to Oakland
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SAN → SJCSan Diego to San Jose | SkyWest Airlines | 79.7% | 80.7% | 1.26% | 5am–8am, Wed | OO 3359 08:01 |
| 2. SAN → SJCSan Diego to San Jose | Southwest Airlines | 72.0% | 72.6% | 0.77% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. SAN → OAKSan Diego to Oakland | Southwest Airlines | 71.7% | 72.4% | 0.95% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 4. SAN → SFOSan Diego to San Francisco | United Airlines | 66.8% | 67.2% | 0.56% | 5am–8am, Sat | UA 2117 16:00 |
| 5. SAN → SFOSan Diego to San Francisco | SkyWest Airlines | 58.6% | 59.8% | 1.96% | 8pm–5am, Sat | OO 3347 11:04 |
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 41 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am368 flights97.5%
- 8am–11am681 flights87.6%
- 11am–2pm601 flights73.1%
- 2pm–5pm694 flights65.2%
- 5pm–8pm552 flights59.5%
- 8pm–5am394 flights56.2%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.2% on time, against 97.5% for the 5am–8am 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 694 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SAN to OAK by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On SAN to OAK, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 97.5% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 56.2%, a wide gap of 41.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am97.5%
- 8–11am87.6%
- 11am–2pm73.1%
- 2–5pm65.2%
- 5–8pm59.5%
- 8pm–5am56.2%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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 63.3% on time, 20 points below January, the best at 83.6%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 369 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 64.6%, a spread of 20 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 70% of the 44,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 70%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
- 0%Extreme weather
70% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 44,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 70 to one. The split is drawn from 43,921 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 97.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.00% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.03%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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.
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 62.7% on time across 3,278 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,290 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 OAK 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 83.6% on time and August 63.3%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 3,256 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SAN to OAK questions
How often is SAN to OAK delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.1% of the 3,290 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is SAN to OAK compared with the rest of the country?
72.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 4 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SAN to OAK?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 97.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 56.2%, 41 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 OAK?
August is the weakest month at 63.3% on time, compared with 83.6% in January. Across the year that is 20 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
- OAK to SAN — the return legseparate record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- Oakland International (OAK) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on SAN to OAK75.6%
- Southwest Airlines on SAN to OAK72.4%
- SAN to SFO, a related route59.5%
- LAS to OAK, a related route71.6%
- SAN to DEN, a related route78.4%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record100.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record75.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record72.4%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. SAN to OAK and OAK 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.