Carrier route record

OOSAN→OAK

SkyWest Airlines · San Diego to Oakland

Flights: 200
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 6%
Carriers: 3

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

SkyWest on SAN to OAK sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 55 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 200 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on SAN to OAK runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 50 extra late arrivals.

On time

72.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 197 completed flights

Avg delay

54 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.50%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.5%

Every carrier on SAN to OAK, 3,195 flights

These figures cover 200 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

SkyWest against every carrier on SAN to OAK

SkyWest flew 200 of the 3,195 flights on SAN to OAK, about 6% of it. Its 72.6% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 83.6% to SkyWest at 72.6%. 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 OAK
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	55	83.6%	57 min	0.00%	B+
Southwest Airlines	2,940	74.5%	50 min	1.09%	C
SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample	200	72.6%	54 min	1.50%	C

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 33 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am42 flights90.5%
11am–2pm70 flights75.7%
2pm–5pm39 flights66.7%
5pm–8pm4 flights—
8pm–5am45 flights57.1%

Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.1% on time, against 90.5% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 70 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on SAN to OAK through the year

Apr–Jun 2026200 flights72.6%

Scale runs 65% to 80%. 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 72.6% on time across 200 flights.

Split by quarter, SkyWest on SAN to OAK logged 200 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 72.6% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 76.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 60.0%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 57% of the 2,895 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
57%
National Airspace System
28%
Carrier
14%
Extreme weather
2%

57% 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 2,895 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 33 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 2,895 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 90.5% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.50% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.6% 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 55 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 68.6% on time across 207 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 200 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 SkyWest on SAN to OAK

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 200 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 72.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 197 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