Planning air travel from Austin comes with numerous considerations, including the cost, if the flight is nonstop and which airport to choose.
Even if you score a great deal on a direct flight from a conveniently located airport, you might still find yourself disappointed if your flight is delayed or canceled, an experience that data shows has been more common in post-pandemic travel.
Forecasting the likelihood of such events can be challenging, but we’ve got you covered.
The Austin American-Statesman analyzed data for nearly 2.2 million flights that departed from three Texas airports – Austin-Bergstrom International, San Antonio International and Dallas/Fort Worth International – between 2020 and 2024 to see which airports, airlines and days throughout the year have historically experienced the most cancellations and delays.
Using data provided by aviation tracking company FlightAware, the charts below show how different airports and airlines have performed over time, particularly during peak times like spring break or the summer and holiday travel seasons.
Select an airport and airline to see historical data
Most frequently traveled airlines from ,
ranked by share of flights delayed and canceled from
Click on each column header to order by that metric.
When have flight disruptions historically been the worst at
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On most days at this airport % – % of flights were delayed and % – % of flights were canceled. Hover over a square below to see more.
Severity of flight disruptions
The Statesman developed a “health index” for each airport to gauge the severity of flight disruptions. The index assigns a score of 1 to 5 to each airport, with 1 representing the least severe situation for both delays and cancellations.
In 2024, DFW had the highest frequency of severe disruptions (level 4 or 5), with one occurring every 4.6 days. In the same period, Austin-Bergstrom experienced severe disruptions once every 5.9 days, while San Antonio International saw one every 6 days.
DFW offers significantly more flights than both San Antonio International and Austin-Bergstrom. Since 2020, DFW averaged 26,500 monthly scheduled flights compared to 6,500 and 3,200 for Austin-Bergstrom and San Antonio International, respectively.
Most airports had fewer severe disruptions in 2020 when there were fewer flights due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, as travel returned to pre-pandemic levels, airports faced an increase in severe disruptions.
In 2021 and 2022, disruptions surged at each airport, but in 2023 the number of severe disruptions began to drop to nearly pre-pandemic levels. 2024 severe disruptions are only slightly higher than those seen in the preceding year.
For instance, the number of severely disrupted days at San Antonio International is nearly seven times higher from 2020 to 2024 – the airport had nine days of severe disruptions in 2020 and 61 days in 2024. At Austin-Bergstrom, the number of severely disrupted days jumped from 2 to 62 and from 12 to 79 at DFW.
Delays, which FlightAware defines as flights that arrive more than 15 minutes late to their destination, account for the majority of disruptions.
Overall, JetBlue Airways had the highest delay rates at San Antonio International for domestic airlines, while Frontier Airlines took the top spot for DFW and Hawaiian Airlines for Austin-Bergstrom.
Delay rates were also high for the most popular airlines at each airport.
Over the past five years, about 25% of American Airlines’ 816,000 scheduled flights out of DFW were delayed, and 2.6% were canceled.
Austin’s top airline, Southwest Airlines, saw about 22% of its 148,000 scheduled flights delayed and another 2.2% canceled.
Southwest was also San Antonio International’s most frequently traveled airline. At SAT, about 16% of Southwest’s 67,100 flights were delayed and 2.3% were canceled.
How long are arrival delays with flights departing from ?
width of the arc represents number offlights within a delay minutes rangeteal arc represents mediandelay for flights
There were no delayed flights departing from in .
About this tool
Historical data from FlightAware shows flights that departed from the selected airport and arrived late to their destination. All data is from 2020-2024 unless otherwise noted. Real time data is from the AirLabs API and shows flights that departed late from the designated airport. This data is updated once every hour.
The aviation industry defines “delayed flights” as flights that arrive more than 15 minutes late to their destination and “delay minutes” as the amount of time that flights arrive after the 15 minute window. This means that a flight with a 15 minute delay arrived 30 minutes after its scheduled arrival time.
The Statesman developed a “health index” for each airport, based on the airport’s individual daily delay and cancellation totals. The share of delayed and canceled flights were placed in unique quantile ranges for each airport. The ranges for delays and cancellations are also different because there are typically far fewer cancellations than delays. Each day at each airport was assigned a score of 1 to 5 for both delays and cancellations based on which range they fell in. These two scores were averaged to give the daily overall health index for the airport.
Days with a value of 1 were the least severe and days with a value of 5 were the most.