Carrier route record
DLSAT→LAX
Delta Air Lines · San Antonio to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 679
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 37%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 679 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's SAT to LAX record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 115 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 677 completed flights
Avg delay
107 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.29%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
85.9%
Every carrier on SAT to LAX, 1,814 flights
These figures cover 679 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 12 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
Delta against every carrier on SAT to LAX
Delta flew 679 of the 1,814 flights on SAT to LAX, about 37% of it. Its 88.8% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 85.9%. 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 72.1%. 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% | 122 min | 0.29% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 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+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on SAT to LAX
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.
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 679 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights92.3%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm251 flights84.8%
- 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 92.3% of the time, against 84.1% for the evening window. That is 8 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 94.1% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 85.4%, a spread of 9 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on SAT to LAX runs when it is late
Delta on SAT to LAX often beats the schedule: 283 of 677 completed flights, 42%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 76 late arrivals split 19 under half an hour, 27 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 30 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early283 flights41.8%
- Within 15 min318 flights47.0%
- 15–29 min late19 flights2.8%
- 30–59 min late27 flights4.0%
- 1–2 hours late14 flights2.1%
- 2+ hours late16 flights2.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 677 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
18 of 87 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 21% of them. Only 7 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on SAT to LAX
The latest arrival of the period was on 19 June 2026, 18 hours 45 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 19 June 2026 | 18 hours 45 minutes | Carrier |
| 12 June 2026 | 14 hours 43 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 February 2026 | 8 hours 16 minutes | Carrier |
| 4 September 2025 | 6 hours 3 minutes | Carrier |
| 25 January 2026 | 5 hours 41 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 63% of the 8,130 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 63%Carrier
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%Extreme weather
- 4%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 63%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,137 of the 8,130 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 8,130 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.29%, 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 costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.4% 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 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 runs 85.9% on time across 679 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 679 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. 679 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 88.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 677 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 LAX82.5%
- Southwest Airlines on SAT to LAX72.1%
- 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 7.05 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.