Carrier route record
DLSFO→AUS
Delta Air Lines · San Francisco to Austin
- Flights
- 444
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on SFO to AUS draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 444 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Delta on SFO to AUS runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 166 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
61.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 436 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.58%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.8%
Every carrier on SFO to AUS, 2,792 flights
These figures cover 444 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on SFO to AUS
Delta flew 444 of the 2,792 flights on SFO to AUS, about 16% of it. Its 61.0% on time is 14 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 100.0% to Southwest at 44.8%. Three 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 Airlinesthin sample | 8 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 343 | 84.9% | 59 min | 0.87% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 1,653 | 82.7% | 52 min | 0.73% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 444 | 61.0% | 73 min | 1.58% | D |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 344 | 44.8% | 64 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on SFO to AUS
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am79 flights67.9%
- 11am–2pm191 flights55.9%
- 2pm–5pm95 flights75.3%
- 5pm–8pm79 flights49.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 40% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 49.4% on time, against 75.3% for the 2pm–5pm slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 191 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on SFO to AUS through the year
July is the worst month at 38.7% on time, 48 points below March, the best at 86.7%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 76.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 54.0%. 22 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 12,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
49% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 48 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 12,406 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.58% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.23%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
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 66.7% on time across 444 flights, 6 points above 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 444 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 SFO to AUS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 444 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 61.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 436 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to AUS, every carrier
- Delta on AUS to SFO, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on SFO to AUS84.9%
- United Airlines on SFO to AUS82.7%
- Southwest Airlines on SFO to AUS44.8%
- Delta Air Lines 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
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.