Route reliability record
SJU→DFW
San Juan to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 993
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,165 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 993 SJU to DFW flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Best time to fly SJU to DFW: a 8pm–5am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.1% of the time and Friday flights 84.9%, against 78.7% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 959 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.32%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
79.6% on time across 703 flights
These figures cover 993 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 SJU to DFW
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 703 | 79.6% | 87 min | 1.71% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 252 | 78.8% | 77 min | 3.57% | B− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 38 | 61.1% | 68 min | 5.26% | D− |
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 14 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–8am305 flights83.6%
- 8am–11am3 flights—
- 11am–2pm29 flights—
- 2pm–5pm277 flights72.0%
- 5pm–8pm203 flights75.1%
- 8pm–5am176 flights86.1%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is the strongest at 86.1% on time. The full set of windows spans 14 points.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 30 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.
January is the weak month at 56.8% on time, against 87.2% in September. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 113 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 84.9% on time and Saturday the weakest at 71.2%. 14 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 48% of the 17,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
48% 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 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 28 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 16,894 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 6,246 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.32% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.11%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 2,165 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 69.5% on time across 989 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 993 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DFW after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 993 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 78.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 959 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SJU to DFW questions
How often is SJU to DFW delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.3% of the 993 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is SJU to DFW compared with the rest of the country?
78.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SJU to DFW?
The 8pm–5am departure window is the strongest at 86.1% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 72.0%, 14 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 January delays on SJU to DFW?
January is the weakest month at 56.8% on time, compared with 87.2% in September. Across the year that is 30 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
- DFW to SJU — the return legseparate record
- Luis Munoz Marin International (SJU) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- American Airlines on SJU to DFW79.6%
- Spirit Airlines on SJU to DFW78.8%
- SJU to MCO, a related route78.9%
- ORD to DFW, a related route69.7%
- SJU to JFK, a related route79.3%
- American Airlines on-time record79.6%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record78.8%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record61.1%
- 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. SJU to DFW and DFW to SJU are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.