Carrier route record

DLSFO→AUS

Delta Air Lines · San Francisco to Austin

Flights: 500
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 18%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on SFO to AUS draws a D. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 500 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,637 at 79.6% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Delta on SFO to AUS runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 125 extra late arrivals.

On time

64.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 494 completed flights

Avg delay

86 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.20%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

71.8%

Every carrier on SFO to AUS, 2,786 flights

These figures cover 500 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Carrier by carrier

Delta against every carrier on SFO to AUS

Delta flew 500 of the 2,786 flights on SFO to AUS, about 18% of it. Its 64.8% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 87.5% to Southwest at 40.1%. Two 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.

On-time performance by carrier on SFO to AUS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Alaska Airlinesthin 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 (this page)	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.

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on SFO to AUS

DL 38113:5771.3% · 365 flights

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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 32 points, against 39 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am—
8am–11am140 flights79.1%
11am–2pm130 flights59.8%
2pm–5pm95 flights75.3%
5pm–8pm135 flights47.4%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 40% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 47.4% on time, against 79.1% for the 8am–11am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 140 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on SFO to AUS through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.March best, April worst

Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 54.2%. March is the strongest month at 86.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 33 points. May was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 78.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 51.4%, a spread of 27 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Delta on SFO to AUS runs when it is late

The 174 late arrivals split 49 under half an hour, 56 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 69 an hour or more.

15+ min early86 flights17.4%
Within 15 min234 flights47.4%
15–29 min late49 flights9.9%
30–59 min late56 flights11.3%
1–2 hours late42 flights8.5%
2+ hours late27 flights5.5%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 494 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

26 of 168 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. In the other direction, 32 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at AUS.

The worst days

Worst days for Delta on SFO to AUS

The latest arrival of the period was on 25 February 2026, 16 hours 18 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of Delta on SFO to AUS in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
25 February 2026	16 hours 18 minutes	Carrier
19 August 2026	15 hours 52 minutes	Carrier
6 May 2026	13 hours 54 minutes	Carrier
22 July 2026	12 hours 51 minutes	Extreme weather
5 October 2025	7 hours 24 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
47%
Carrier
33%
National Airspace System
14%
Extreme weather
6%

47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 14,960 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 79.1% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.20% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

14.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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 69.2% on time across 500 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 500 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. 500 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 64.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 494 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures