Route profile
SAN→OAK
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from San Diego to Oakland, 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 57% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 10,639 flights. How this is calculated
SAN → OAK arrives on time 76.7% of the time; the return trip, OAK → SAN, arrives on time 74.6% of the time, a 2.1-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
SAN → OAK spends 22.6 minutes on the ground on a 446-mile trip: 16.9 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at SAN and 5.7 minutes from touchdown to gate at OAK.
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 96% of 4,023 comparable routes.
92.4% on time for 5–9 AM departures, against 58.7% 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 SAN → OAK flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
SAN → OAK cancelled 125 of 10,639 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 85. The reason filed most often was the airline, 44.8% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 190 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 125 cancelled departures carrying a reason code.
What each reason means
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
56 cancellations, 44.8% of the total.
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
50 cancellations, 40.0% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
19 cancellations, 15.2% 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.
125 coded cancellations were recorded on SAN → OAK; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
40 min late
against a median of 4 min early
Percentiles over 10,639 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at OAK after arriving from SAN.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 40% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 22% | High risk |
| 60 min | 14% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 5.8% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 3.0% | 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 1.17% of the time and diverts 0.05% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 10,509 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 40 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 10,639 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
SAN → OAK flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 92.4% of the time, against 58.7% for 9 PM–5 AM departures, a gap of 33.7 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 5 AM: too few flights to score
- 6 AM: 96.8% on time from 513 flights
- 7 AM: 91.8% on time from 789 flights
- 8 AM: 90.2% on time from 844 flights
- 9 AM: 84.3% on time from 742 flights
- 10 AM: 84.0% on time from 623 flights
- 11 AM: 80.4% on time from 564 flights
- 12 PM: 76.6% on time from 661 flights
- 1 PM: 75.5% on time from 672 flights
- 2 PM: 74.6% on time from 641 flights
- 3 PM: 76.0% on time from 634 flights
- 4 PM: 73.5% on time from 796 flights
- 5 PM: 61.7% on time from 558 flights
- 6 PM: 65.0% on time from 711 flights
- 7 PM: 66.4% on time from 648 flights
- 8 PM: 65.0% on time from 888 flights
- 9 PM: 57.2% on time from 296 flights
- 10 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why SAN → OAK runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
screening or terminal security incidents
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for SAN → OAK. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on SAN → OAK, at 68.6%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 92.4% of the time and 9 PM–5 AM departures 58.7%.
How this route holds up in bad weather
July 2023 – July 2026
The harder-hit end is the one the flight leaves from, where a cancellation keeps it from departing at all. Bad weather cancels 3.5 times the normal rate at SAN against 1.5 times at OAK. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: SAN 3.5% against 1.0%, OAK 1.0% against 0.6%. 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 | SAN | OAK |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 3.5% | 1.0% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 1.0% | 0.6% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 66.7% | 82.0% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 78.4% | 81.4% |
| Departures in bad weather | 19,707 | 10,366 |
Southwest Airlines (4.5% cancelled against 3.2% for the other carriers at SAN) and SkyWest Airlines (5.5% cancelled against 3.3% for the other carriers at SAN) cancelled more departures from SAN in bad weather than the other carriers there did in the same months. None of the route’s other carriers was clearly better. One more carrier flies this route but has too few bad-weather departures from SAN to compare.
This route’s airlines in bad weather at SAN
All departures from SAN| Airline | Bad-weather departures | Cancelled | Other carriers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 6,793 | 4.5%above the others | 3.2% |
| SkyWest Airlines | 2,629 | 5.5%above the others | 3.3% |
These are airport figures, not route figures: every scheduled departure from SAN and OAK, to any destination, in hours the weather report called bad. The airline rows count each carrier’s departures from SAN on every route.
Weather source and limits. In full: SAN (airlines), OAK, 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 | 9,691 | 76.8% | 1.15% | -4 min | 5.9% |
| Spirit Airlines | 686 | 76.4% | 1.60% | -4 min | 6.8% |
| SkyWest Airlines | 262 | 75.7% | 1.15% | -6 min | 6.9% |
Southwest Airlines flew 91.1% of the 10,639 flights listed.
Carriers on this route performed within a couple of percentage points of each other.
Other ways to fly San Diego to San Francisco
Airport pairs in the same two city markets, as the DOT defines them.
SAN → SJC is the most reliable pairing for this journey at 78.1% on time, against 66.7% for SAN → SFO.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Tuesday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 15.3 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 85.1%
- Feb: 81.8%
- Mar: 81.0%
- Apr: 79.1%
- May: 74.4%
- Jun: 66.1%
- Jul: 73.5%
- Aug: 74.8%
- Sep: 77.0%
- Oct: 73.1%
- Nov: 82.0%
- Dec: 77.5%
June is historically the weakest month and January the strongest, a spread of 19.0 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 76.4% from 357 flights
- August 2023: 73.7% from 358 flights
- September 2023: 81.1% from 331 flights
- October 2023: 77.0% from 335 flights
- November 2023: 87.0% from 317 flights
- December 2023: 86.1% from 321 flights
- January 2024: 83.3% from 290 flights
- February 2024: 77.9% from 266 flights
- March 2024: 81.7% from 281 flights
- April 2024: 83.1% from 280 flights
- May 2024: 78.1% from 289 flights
- June 2024: 63.6% from 294 flights
- July 2024: 68.5% from 297 flights
- August 2024: 74.0% from 306 flights
- September 2024: 75.2% from 304 flights
- October 2024: 70.4% from 316 flights
- November 2024: 81.6% from 296 flights
- December 2024: 74.3% from 292 flights
- January 2025: 88.6% from 242 flights
- February 2025: 86.4% from 221 flights
- March 2025: 80.0% from 282 flights
- April 2025: 78.3% from 289 flights
- May 2025: 77.7% from 298 flights
- June 2025: 69.4% from 286 flights
- July 2025: 75.4% from 288 flights
- August 2025: 76.8% from 282 flights
- September 2025: 73.9% from 274 flights
- October 2025: 71.5% from 271 flights
- November 2025: 76.1% from 260 flights
- December 2025: 70.5% from 262 flights
- January 2026: 83.6% from 222 flights
- February 2026: 81.8% from 220 flights
- March 2026: 81.5% from 229 flights
- April 2026: 75.6% from 260 flights
- May 2026: 68.4% from 336 flights
- June 2026: 65.4% from 291 flights
- July 2026: 73.3% from 296 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 74.3% against 77.2% in the 12 months before — declining by 2.9 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 10,639 SAN → OAK 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