Route reliability record
SAT→ATL
San Antonio to Atlanta
- Flights
- 2,962
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 874 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 2,962 SAT to ATL flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly SAT to ATL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 93.3%, against 85.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 86 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,895 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.72%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
87.4% on time across 2,596 flights
These figures cover 2,962 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 SAT to ATL
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 2,596 | 87.4% | 79 min | 1.93% | A |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 292 | 77.8% | 45 min | 0.34% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 74 | 68.5% | 115 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on SAT to ATL
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.
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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 18 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am786 flights93.0%
- 8am–11am491 flights91.0%
- 11am–2pm689 flights84.9%
- 2pm–5pm542 flights75.3%
- 5pm–8pm454 flights82.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.0% of the time, against 75.3% for the afternoon window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 786 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SAT to ATL 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 SAT to ATL, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.0% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 75.3%, a wide gap of 17.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.0%
- 8–11am91.0%
- 11am–2pm84.9%
- 2–5pm75.3%
- 5–8pm82.5%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
July is the worst month at 72.1% on time, 23 points below September, the best at 94.6%. 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 275 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 93.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 81.8%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 31,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Carrier
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 31,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 to one. The split is drawn from 30,806 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 13,000 of the 31,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.72% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.54%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% 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.
The 874 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.1% on time across 2,962 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,962 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 ATL 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. September runs 94.6% on time and July 72.1%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,895 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SAT to ATL questions
How often is SAT to ATL delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.1% of the 2,962 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is SAT to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
85.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 9 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SAT to ATL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.0% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 75.3%, 18 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 July delays on SAT to ATL?
July is the weakest month at 72.1% on time, compared with 94.6% in September. Across the year that is 23 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
- ATL to SAT — the return legseparate record
- San Antonio International (SAT) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on SAT to ATL87.4%
- Southwest Airlines on SAT to ATL77.8%
- SAT to DFW, a related route79.4%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- SAT to DEN, a related route82.1%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record87.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record77.8%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record68.5%
- 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. SAT to ATL and ATL to SAT 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.