Carrier route record
F9SNA→SFO
Frontier Airlines · Santa Ana to San Francisco
- Flights
- 146
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 3%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on SNA to SFO draws a D. Roughly one flight in two 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 146 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 3,564 at 71.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on SNA to SFO runs 19 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 193 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
58.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 144 completed flights
Avg delay
95 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.37%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.3%
Every carrier on SNA to SFO, 4,771 flights
These figures cover 146 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 19.4% 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
Frontier against every carrier on SNA to SFO
Frontier flew 146 of the 4,771 flights on SNA to SFO, about 3% of it. Its 58.3% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 85.7% to Frontier at 58.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 50 | 85.7% | 35 min | 2.00% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines | 3,564 | 71.2% | 67 min | 1.63% | C |
| United Airlines | 1,011 | 68.1% | 63 min | 0.89% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 146 | 58.3% | 95 min | 1.37% | D |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 71.2%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Departure window
When Frontier runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 12 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm58 flights65.5%
- 2pm–5pm23 flights—
- 5pm–8pm51 flights54.0%
- 8pm–5am14 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 54.0% on time, against 65.5% for the 11am–2pm 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 58 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on SNA to SFO through the year
- Jul–Sep 202544 flights63.6%
- Oct–Dec 202531 flights45.2%
- Jan–Mar 202614 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202657 flights54.5%
Scale runs 35% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 58.3% on time across 146 flights.
Frontier on SNA to SFO did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 63.6% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 45.2%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 49 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 71.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 41.2%. 31 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 5,726 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%National Airspace System
- 17%Carrier
47% 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 5,726 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 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 5,726 reported delay minutes.
35% 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 2,022 minutes out of 5,726, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.37% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
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. 19.4% 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 372 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.6% on time across 145 flights, 15 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 15 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 146 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 Frontier on SNA to SFO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 146 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 58.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 144 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SNA to SFO, every carrier
- Frontier on SFO to SNA, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on SNA to SFO71.2%
- United Airlines on SNA to SFO68.1%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- John Wayne Airport (SNA) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) 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.