Route profile
OAK→SAN
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Oakland to San Diego, 446 miles.
Right now
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Route reliability
July 2023 – July 2026
Better than 45% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 10,555 flights. How this is calculated
OAK → SAN arrives on time 74.6% of the time; the return trip, SAN → OAK, arrives on time 76.7% of the time, a 2.1-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
OAK → SAN spends 19.0 minutes on the ground on a 446-mile trip: 14.5 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at OAK and 4.5 minutes from touchdown to gate at SAN.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
What stands out
On-time performance swings unusually widely by time of day here, wider than 98% of 4,023 comparable routes.
89.1% on time for 5–9 AM departures, against 52.7% for 9 PM–5 AM.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Ranked against every other route with the same kind of figure and at least 4,023 in the comparison.
Why OAK → SAN flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
OAK → SAN cancelled 122 of 10,555 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 87. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 41.8% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 207 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 122 cancelled departures carrying a reason code.
What each reason means
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
51 cancellations, 41.8% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
50 cancellations, 41.0% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
21 cancellations, 17.2% of the total.
A terminal evacuation, a security breach, screening equipment failure, or screening queues over 29 minutes.
0 cancellations, 0.0% of the total.
Reason codes are the operating airline’s own filing with US DOT, not an independent finding of fault. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
122 coded cancellations were recorded on OAK → SAN; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
44 min late
against a median of 1 min early
Percentiles over 10,555 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at SAN after arriving from OAK.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 46% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 24% | High risk |
| 60 min | 15% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 6.4% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 3.3% | Low risk |
This is one leg of a connection. Gate changes and the next flight's own schedule matter too. And a connection can fail before delay is even the question — this route cancels 1.16% of the time and diverts 0.14% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 10,418 arrivals on this route that landed later than the connection time less 30 minutes to reach the next gate.
The worst tenth of arrivals on this route land at least 44 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 10,555 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
OAK → SAN flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 89.1% of the time, against 52.7% for 9 PM–5 AM departures, a gap of 36.4 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 4 AM: too few flights to score
- 5 AM: 91.0% on time from 150 flights
- 6 AM: 92.2% on time from 946 flights
- 7 AM: 91.1% on time from 591 flights
- 8 AM: 84.0% on time from 858 flights
- 9 AM: 84.5% on time from 553 flights
- 10 AM: 74.4% on time from 809 flights
- 11 AM: 75.0% on time from 660 flights
- 12 PM: 74.1% on time from 581 flights
- 1 PM: 82.9% on time from 605 flights
- 2 PM: 66.0% on time from 588 flights
- 3 PM: 69.4% on time from 715 flights
- 4 PM: 66.0% on time from 693 flights
- 5 PM: 66.3% on time from 763 flights
- 6 PM: 63.4% on time from 655 flights
- 7 PM: 66.0% on time from 470 flights
- 8 PM: 60.4% on time from 723 flights
- 9 PM: 52.7% on time from 195 flights
- 10 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why OAK → SAN runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for OAK → SAN. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on OAK → SAN, at 44.3%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 89.1% of the time and 9 PM–5 AM departures 52.7%.
How this route holds up in bad weather
July 2023 – July 2026
The harder-hit end is SAN, where the flight lands. Its figure counts departures from SAN, so it says more about how that airport copes than about this route. Bad weather cancels 3.5 times the normal rate at SAN against 1.5 times at OAK. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: OAK 1.0% against 0.6%, SAN 3.5% against 1.0%. Flights that did leave SAN in bad weather arrived on time 66.7% of the time, against 78.4% in normal hours.
Bad weather and normal hours at the airports
Scheduled departures, July 2023 – July 2026| Departures from | OAK | SAN |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 1.0% | 3.5% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 0.6% | 1.0% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 82.0% | 66.7% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 81.4% | 78.4% |
| Departures in bad weather | 10,366 | 19,707 |
These are airport figures, not route figures: every scheduled departure from OAK and SAN, to any destination, in hours the weather report called bad.
Weather source and limits. In full: OAK, SAN, What Weather Costs Each Airport, Who Cancels More When the Weather Turns, Airports That Change Places When Weather Turns.
Airlines on this route
Carriers with at least 200 flights, by the airline that operated each one.
| Carrier | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 9,597 | 74.6% | 1.03% | -1 min | 6.5% |
| Spirit Airlines | 685 | 78.3% | 2.92% | -5 min | 7.4% |
| SkyWest Airlines | 273 | 67.8% | 1.10% | 4 min | 10.0% |
Southwest Airlines flew 90.9% of the 10,555 flights listed. Spirit Airlines cancelled 2.92% of its flights here against 1.03% for Southwest Airlines.
Spirit Airlines arrived on time 10.5 percentage points more often than SkyWest Airlines on this route.
Other ways to fly San Francisco to San Diego
Airport pairs in the same two city markets, as the DOT defines them.
SJC → SAN is the most reliable pairing for this journey at 76.5% on time, against 71.4% for SFO → SAN.
Flying to SAN from the San Francisco area? Compare OAK, SFO, SJC for SAN, with the same test for what counts as a real difference.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Saturday is historically the most reliable day and Friday the least, a gap of 14.2 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 84.0%
- Feb: 79.1%
- Mar: 77.6%
- Apr: 72.8%
- May: 71.4%
- Jun: 68.0%
- Jul: 68.9%
- Aug: 75.8%
- Sep: 76.8%
- Oct: 75.2%
- Nov: 78.4%
- Dec: 72.6%
June is historically the weakest month and January the strongest, a spread of 16.0 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 71.8% from 355 flights
- August 2023: 75.6% from 343 flights
- September 2023: 79.4% from 321 flights
- October 2023: 81.6% from 333 flights
- November 2023: 86.6% from 317 flights
- December 2023: 80.1% from 322 flights
- January 2024: 86.6% from 279 flights
- February 2024: 82.0% from 254 flights
- March 2024: 76.4% from 269 flights
- April 2024: 80.3% from 261 flights
- May 2024: 71.7% from 265 flights
- June 2024: 66.1% from 292 flights
- July 2024: 71.1% from 297 flights
- August 2024: 79.9% from 306 flights
- September 2024: 78.9% from 303 flights
- October 2024: 73.4% from 316 flights
- November 2024: 82.7% from 298 flights
- December 2024: 77.2% from 291 flights
- January 2025: 87.2% from 246 flights
- February 2025: 82.2% from 228 flights
- March 2025: 84.2% from 283 flights
- April 2025: 78.6% from 288 flights
- May 2025: 83.6% from 299 flights
- June 2025: 79.5% from 287 flights
- July 2025: 75.1% from 288 flights
- August 2025: 71.6% from 282 flights
- September 2025: 71.4% from 275 flights
- October 2025: 69.3% from 271 flights
- November 2025: 62.9% from 260 flights
- December 2025: 58.4% from 261 flights
- January 2026: 77.2% from 222 flights
- February 2026: 72.6% from 220 flights
- March 2026: 70.9% from 229 flights
- April 2026: 58.8% from 261 flights
- May 2026: 60.5% from 339 flights
- June 2026: 58.6% from 293 flights
- July 2026: 57.3% from 301 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 65.3% against 80.0% in the 12 months before — declining by 14.7 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 10,555 OAK → SAN flight records from the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, covering July 2023 – July 2026. Late means 15 or more minutes past scheduled arrival; cancelled and diverted flights are left out of on-time rates.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: How Long a Layover Needs to Be · Two Airlines on One Route · Best Time of Day to Fly From Major US Airports
Analysis last recomputed