Route reliability record
DFW→SMF
Dallas-Fort Worth to Sacramento
- Flights
- 1,646
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,431 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,646 DFW to SMF flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
Best time to fly DFW to SMF: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 71.7%, against 66.7% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 109 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,600 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.61%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
66.7% on time across 1,646 flights
These figures cover 1,646 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.6% 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
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to SMF
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 1,646 | 66.7% | 73 min | 2.61% | C |
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 34 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am345 flights84.3%
- 11am–2pm365 flights76.2%
- 2pm–5pm64 flights50.0%
- 5pm–8pm391 flights56.5%
- 8pm–5am481 flights57.2%
Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 84.3% of the time, against 50.0% for the afternoon window. That is 34 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 481 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 30 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.
June is the worst month at 46.9% on time, 30 points below March, the best at 76.9%. 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 164 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 71.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.1%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 39,000 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
52% 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 39,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 38,788 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 15,000 of the 39,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.61%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.6% 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.
The 1,431 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.7% on time across 1,646 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,646 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 SMF 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. March runs 76.9% on time and June 46.9%, a swing of 30 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,600 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to SMF questions
How often is DFW to SMF delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 33.3% of the 1,646 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to SMF compared with the rest of the country?
66.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 11 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to SMF?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 84.3% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 50.0%, 34 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 June delays on DFW to SMF?
June is the weakest month at 46.9% on time, compared with 76.9% in March. Across the year that is 30 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
- SMF to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Sacramento International (SMF) delay statistics
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- LAX to SMF, a related route84.6%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- American Airlines on-time record66.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to SMF and SMF to DFW 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.