Carrier route record

ASSJC→SAN

Alaska Airlines · San Jose to San Diego

Flights: 111
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 2%
Carriers: 3

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

Alaska on SJC to SAN lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average. That rests on 111 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 1,148 at 73.0% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's SJC to SAN record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 63 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 110 completed flights

Avg delay

43 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.90%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

68.3%

Every carrier on SJC to SAN, 5,004 flights

These figures cover 111 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 SJC to SAN

Alaska flew 111 of the 5,004 flights on SJC to SAN, about 2% of it. Its 83.6% on time is 15 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 68.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 83.6% to Southwest at 66.5%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 73.0% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 66.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 3,745 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on SJC to SAN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Alaska Airlines (this page)thin sample	111	83.6%	43 min	0.90%	B+
SkyWest Airlines	1,148	73.0%	50 min	1.39%	C
Southwest Airlines	3,745	66.5%	46 min	0.96%	C+

SkyWest leads Southwest by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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Departure window

When Alaska 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 111 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Alaska's SJC to SAN record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 83.6% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Alaska on SJC to SAN through the year

Apr–Jun 202649 flights91.8%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights77.0%

Scale runs 70% to 95%.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 83.6% on time across 111 flights.

Split by quarter, Alaska on SJC to SAN logged 49 flights in Apr–Jun 2026 and 62 flights in Jul–Sep 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 83.6% annual figure is the one to use.

Arrival by arrival

How late Alaska on SJC to SAN runs when it is late

Alaska on SJC to SAN often beats the schedule: 32 of 110 completed flights, 29%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 10 of the 18 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 3 reached an hour or more.

15+ min early32 flights29.1%
Within 15 min60 flights54.5%
15–29 min late10 flights9.1%
30–59 min late5 flights4.5%
1–2 hours late2 flights1.8%
2+ hours late1 flights0.9%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 110 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Only 17 of 110 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.

The worst days

Worst days for Alaska on SJC to SAN

The latest arrival of the period was on 21 June 2026, 2 hours 55 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Four of the five worst days fell in July 2026.

The latest arrivals of Alaska on SJC to SAN in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
21 June 2026	2 hours 55 minutes	Carrier
21 July 2026	1 hour 32 minutes	Carrier
13 July 2026	1 hour 18 minutes	Carrier
16 July 2026	50 minutes	National Airspace System
6 July 2026	43 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

Carrier accounts for 51% of the 772 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
51%
National Airspace System
49%

The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 390 of the 772 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 772 reported delay minutes.

49% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 382 minutes out of 772, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations sit at 0.90% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.7% 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 417 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.6% on time across 109 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. 111 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 SJC to SAN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 111 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 83.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 110 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