Route reliability record
SAT→LAX
San Antonio to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 1,814
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,211 mi
- Carriers
- 4
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 an hour and a half. That rests on 1,814 SAT to LAX flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 697 at 90.3% on time.
Best time to fly SAT to LAX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 88.5%, 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 1,805 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.44%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
90.3% on time across 697 flights
These figures cover 1,814 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 LAX
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 697 | 90.3% | 122 min | 0.29% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 679 | 88.8% | 107 min | 0.29% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 101 | 82.5% | 77 min | 3.96% | B− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 337 | 72.1% | 49 min | 0.00% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 90.3%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on SAT to LAX
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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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly San Antonio to Los Angeles
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. SAT → LAXSan Antonio to Los Angeles | SkyWest Airlines | 90.0% | 90.3% | 0.29% | 8am–11am, Tue | OO 4951 07:00 |
| 2. SAT → LAXSan Antonio to Los Angeles | Delta Air Lines | 88.5% | 88.8% | 0.29% | 5am–8am, Sat | DL 2534 06:00 |
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 19 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am730 flights91.7%
- 8am–11am45 flights91.1%
- 11am–2pm161 flights74.5%
- 2pm–5pm741 flights84.6%
- 5pm–8pm106 flights72.6%
- 8pm–5am31 flights80.0%
Scale runs 65% to 95%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.7% of the time, against 72.6% for the evening window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 741 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SAT to LAX 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 LAX, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 91.7% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 72.6%, a wide gap of 19.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am91.7%
- 8–11am91.1%
- 11am–2pm74.5%
- 2–5pm84.6%
- 5–8pm72.6%
- 8pm–5am80.0%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 13 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.
January is the weak month at 79.8% on time, against 93.1% in March. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. December was the busiest month here, with 180 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 84.1%, a spread of 4 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 60% of the 22,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 60%Carrier
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 60%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 13,000 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 22,236 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 91.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.44%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.2% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,211 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 81.6% on time across 1,814 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,814 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 LAX 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. March runs 93.1% on time and January 79.8%, a swing of 13 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,805 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SAT to LAX questions
How often is SAT to LAX 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 1,814 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SAT to LAX?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 90.3% on time across 697 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 88.8%, 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 SAT to LAX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 72.6%, 19 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 January delays on SAT to LAX?
January is the weakest month at 79.8% on time, compared with 93.1% in March. Across the year that is 13 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
- LAX to SAT — the return legseparate record
- San Antonio International (SAT) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on SAT to LAX90.3%
- Delta Air Lines on SAT to LAX88.8%
- Spirit Airlines on SAT to LAX82.5%
- Southwest Airlines on SAT to LAX72.1%
- SAT to DFW, a related route79.4%
- SFO to LAX, a related route70.9%
- SAT to DEN, a related route82.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record90.3%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record88.8%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record82.5%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. SAT to LAX and LAX 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.