Carrier route record
DLSAT→LAX
Delta Air Lines · San Antonio to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 684
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 36%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on SAT to LAX earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 12 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 684 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's SAT to LAX record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 118 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 680 completed flights
Avg delay
107 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.44%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
86.6%
Every carrier on SAT to LAX, 1,881 flights
These figures cover 684 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on SAT to LAX
Delta flew 684 of the 1,881 flights on SAT to LAX, about 36% of it. Its 89.4% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 86.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 90.3% to Southwest at 73.2%. Two 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 697 | 90.3% | 124 min | 0.29% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 684 | 89.4% | 107 min | 0.44% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 163 | 86.8% | 87 min | 2.45% | A |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 337 | 73.2% | 48 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on SAT to LAX
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 684 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights93.1%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm256 flights85.4%
- 5pm–8pm63 flights84.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.1% of the time, against 84.1% for the evening window. That is 9 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on SAT to LAX through the year
January is the weak month at 76.8% on time, against 96.6% 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. October was the busiest month here, with 61 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 96.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 86.7%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 61% of the 7,711 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.
- 61%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%Extreme weather
- 5%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 61%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 4,666 of the 7,711 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,711 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 93.1% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.44%, below the national 1.81% 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 costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.1% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.1% on time across 684 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 684 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 Delta on SAT to LAX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 684 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 89.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 680 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SAT to LAX, every carrier
- Delta on LAX to SAT, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on SAT to LAX90.3%
- Spirit Airlines on SAT to LAX86.8%
- Southwest Airlines on SAT to LAX73.2%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- San Antonio International (SAT) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.