Route reliability record
ACV→SFO
Arcata/Eureka to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,291
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 250 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns a D, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 56.5% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 21 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average a little over an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 1,291 ACV to SFO flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes late.
Best time to fly ACV to SFO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 73.1% of the time and Saturday flights 68.3%, against 56.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 21 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 208 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
56.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,254 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.71%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
57.3% on time across 1,271 flights
These figures cover 1,291 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ACV to SFO
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,271 | 57.3% | 80 min | 2.75% | D |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 20 | 10.0% | 44 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on ACV to SFO
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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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 48 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am342 flights73.1%
- 8am–11am127 flights24.6%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm574 flights60.3%
- 5pm–8pm248 flights40.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 15% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 73.1% of the time, against 24.6% for the morning window. That is 48 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 574 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ACV to SFO by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On ACV to SFO, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 73.1% on time and the worst is 8am–11am at 24.6%, a wide gap of 48.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am73.1%
- 8–11am24.6%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm60.3%
- 5–8pm40.7%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 15% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 40 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.
July is the worst month at 38.2% on time, 40 points below January, the best at 77.9%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 123 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 68.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 52.1%, a spread of 16 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 43,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%National Airspace System
- 26%Carrier
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 14% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 42,784 reported delay minutes.
37% 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 16,000 minutes out of 43,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 2.71%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
15.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 250 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.3% on time across 1,293 flights, 17 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 17 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,291 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in SFO after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 77.9% on time and July 38.2%, a swing of 40 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,254 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ACV to SFO questions
How often is ACV to SFO delayed?
Roughly one flight in two arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 43.5% of the 1,291 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is ACV to SFO compared with the rest of the country?
56.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 21 points against it. That is worth a D on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ACV to SFO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 73.1% on time. The 8am–11am window is the weakest at 24.6%, 48 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 July delays on ACV to SFO?
July is the weakest month at 38.2% on time, compared with 77.9% in January. Across the year that is 40 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
- SFO to ACV — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- LAX to SFO, a related route60.1%
- SEA to SFO, a related route59.8%
- JFK to SFO, a related route71.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record57.3%
- United Airlines on-time record10.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. ACV to SFO and SFO to ACV 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.