Route reliability record
FAT→SFO
Fresno to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,284
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 158 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route draws a D. Roughly 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 1,284 FAT to SFO flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.
Best time to fly FAT to SFO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.6% of the time and Saturday flights 72.1%, against 63.2% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 141 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,266 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.32%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
63.2% on time across 1,284 flights
These figures cover 1,284 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on FAT 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 | 1,284 | 63.2% | 77 min | 1.32% | D |
Flight by flight
Flights on FAT 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 40 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am375 flights81.6%
- 8am–11am267 flights41.6%
- 11am–2pm188 flights65.4%
- 2pm–5pm219 flights62.8%
- 5pm–8pm235 flights57.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 35% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 81.6% of the time, against 41.6% for the morning window. That is 40 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 375 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter FAT 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 FAT to SFO, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 81.6% on time and the worst is 8am–11am at 41.6%, a wide gap of 40.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am81.6%
- 8–11am41.6%
- 11am–2pm65.4%
- 2–5pm62.8%
- 5–8pm57.1%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 35% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 33 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 49.5% on time, 33 points below March, the best at 82.1%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 150 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 72.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 56.9%, a spread of 15 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 36,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%National Airspace System
- 37%Carrier
- 18%Late-arriving aircraft
- 5%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 13,000 of the 36,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 36,087 reported delay minutes.
40% 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 14,000 minutes out of 36,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.32% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.08%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
13.6% 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 158 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 73.6% on time across 1,285 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,284 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. March runs 82.1% on time and July 49.5%, a swing of 33 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,266 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FAT to SFO questions
How often is FAT to SFO delayed?
Roughly 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 36.8% of the 1,284 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is FAT to SFO compared with the rest of the country?
63.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 14 points against it. That is worth a D on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on FAT to SFO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 81.6% on time. The 8am–11am window is the weakest at 41.6%, 40 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 FAT to SFO?
July is the weakest month at 49.5% on time, compared with 82.1% in March. Across the year that is 33 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 FAT — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- FAT to SAN, a related route73.2%
- LAX to SFO, a related route60.1%
- FAT to LAS, a related route81.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record63.2%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. FAT to SFO and SFO to FAT are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed FAT to SFO’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.