Carrier route record
ASSFO→AUS
Alaska Airlines · San Francisco to Austin
- Flights
- 225
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 8%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on SFO to AUS 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 10 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 225 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,637 at 79.6% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's SFO to AUS record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 102 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 224 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.44%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
71.8%
Every carrier on SFO to AUS, 2,786 flights
These figures cover 225 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Alaska against every carrier on SFO to AUS
Alaska flew 225 of the 2,786 flights on SFO to AUS, about 8% of it. Its 87.5% on time is 16 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 71.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 87.5% to Southwest at 40.1%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 79.6% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 40.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 411 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlines (this page)thin sample | 225 | 87.5% | 69 min | 0.44% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 13 | 84.6% | 43 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 1,637 | 79.6% | 53 min | 0.37% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 500 | 64.8% | 86 min | 1.20% | D |
| Southwest Airlines | 411 | 40.1% | 64 min | 0.00% | F+ |
The spread between United and Southwest is 39 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 39 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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Departure window
When Alaska runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 13 points, against 39 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am128 flights93.0%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm97 flights80.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% 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 80.2% for the evening window. That is 13 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 128 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Alaska on SFO to AUS through the year
- Jul–Sep 202547 flights95.7%
- Oct–Dec 2025166 flights87.3%
- Jan–Mar 202612 flights—
Scale runs 80% to 100%. 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 87.5% on time across 225 flights.
Split by quarter, Alaska on SFO to AUS logged 47 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 166 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 12 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 87.5% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 93.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.8%, a spread of 16 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Alaska on SFO to AUS runs when it is late
Alaska on SFO to AUS often beats the schedule: 102 of 224 completed flights, 46%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 28 late arrivals split 8 under half an hour, 9 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 11 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early102 flights45.5%
- Within 15 min94 flights42.0%
- 15–29 min late8 flights3.6%
- 30–59 min late9 flights4.0%
- 1–2 hours late6 flights2.7%
- 2+ hours late5 flights2.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 224 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 39 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 15 still arrived on time. Only 4 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Alaska on SFO to AUS
The latest arrival of the period was on 23 October 2025, 4 hours 42 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 23 October 2025 | 4 hours 42 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 December 2025 | 3 hours 22 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 November 2025 | 3 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 December 2025 | 2 hours 8 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 4 January 2026 | 2 hours 1 minute | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Alaska runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 46% of the 1,936 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Carrier
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 887 of the 1,936 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,936 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 93.0% 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 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.
At 1,504 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.4% on time across 226 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 225 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 Alaska on SFO to AUS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 225 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 87.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 224 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to AUS, every carrier
- Alaska on AUS to SFO, the return leg
- United Airlines on SFO to AUS79.6%
- Delta Air Lines on SFO to AUS64.8%
- Southwest Airlines on SFO to AUS40.1%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.