Carrier route record

OOLAS→SMF

SkyWest Airlines · Las Vegas to Sacramento

Flights: 406
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 10%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on LAS to SMF earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 406 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's LAS to SMF record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 106 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 400 completed flights

Avg delay

96 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.48%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.2%

Every carrier on LAS to SMF, 4,239 flights

These figures cover 406 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

SkyWest against every carrier on LAS to SMF

SkyWest flew 406 of the 4,239 flights on LAS to SMF, about 10% of it. Its 88.2% on time is 10 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 88.2% to Frontier at 76.4%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on LAS to SMF
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	406	88.2%	96 min	1.48%	A
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	190	81.6%	94 min	2.11%	B
Southwest Airlines	3,432	77.0%	53 min	0.32%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	211	76.4%	68 min	1.42%	B

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 11 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–11am41 flights85.4%
11am–2pm150 flights90.3%
2pm–5pm44 flights79.5%
5pm–8pm171 flights89.4%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 90.3% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 79.5%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 171 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on LAS to SMF through the year

Jul–Sep 2025224 flights85.3%
Oct–Dec 2025164 flights92.4%
Jan–Mar 202618 flights—

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 88.2% on time across 406 flights.

Split by quarter, SkyWest on LAS to SMF logged 224 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 164 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 18 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 88.2% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 98.3% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 76.3%. 22 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 65% of the 4,515 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.

Carrier
65%
Extreme weather
20%
National Airspace System
15%

Extreme weather accounts for 20% 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 3.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 4,515 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 65%, 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 2,927 of the 4,515 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.48% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 397 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 90.7% on time across 405 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 406 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking SkyWest on LAS to SMF

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 406 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 88.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 400 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures