Route reliability record
SJC→SNA
San Jose to Santa Ana
- Flights
- 2,699
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 342 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns a A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 45 minutes. That rests on 2,699 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 92 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,671 completed flights
Avg delay
47 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.82%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
87.0% on time across 2,662 flights
These figures cover 2,699 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SJC to SNA
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 2,662 | 87.0% | 47 min | 0.83% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 37 | 73.0% | 45 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 20 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–8am309 flights96.7%
- 8am–11am664 flights95.1%
- 11am–2pm455 flights88.4%
- 2pm–5pm475 flights79.4%
- 5pm–8pm592 flights76.4%
- 8pm–5am204 flights89.1%
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 96.7% of the time, against 76.4% for the evening window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 664 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 78.1% on time, against 93.4% in January. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 241 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 93.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 81.7%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 67% of the 16,000 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.
- 67%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
67% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 67 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 16,386 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 96.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, below the national 1.81% 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 342 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 runs 86.4% on time across 2,661 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 2,699 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 93.4% on time and December 78.1%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,671 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SJC to SNA questions
How often is SJC to SNA delayed?
About one flight in eight arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 13.2% of the 2,699 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average.
How reliable is SJC to SNA compared with the rest of the country?
86.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 9 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SJC to SNA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 96.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 76.4%, 20 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on SJC to SNA?
December is the weakest month at 78.1% on time, compared with 93.4% in January. Across the year that is 15 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- SNA to SJC — the return legseparate record
- Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International (SJC) delay statistics
- John Wayne Airport (SNA) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on-time record87.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record73.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. SJC to SNA and SNA to SJC are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.