Carrier route record
NKLAS→SMF
Spirit Airlines · Las Vegas to Sacramento
- Flights
- 190
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 4%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on LAS to SMF lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 190 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 406 at 88.2% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Spirit's LAS to SMF record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 40 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 185 completed flights
Avg delay
94 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.11%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.2%
Every carrier on LAS to SMF, 4,239 flights
These figures cover 190 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.8% 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
Spirit against every carrier on LAS to SMF
Spirit flew 190 of the 4,239 flights on LAS to SMF, about 4% of it. Its 81.6% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 88.2% to Frontier at 76.4%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 88.2% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 77.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 3,432 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 406 | 88.2% | 96 min | 1.48% | A |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin 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 |
SkyWest leads Southwest by 11 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Departure window
When Spirit runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 14 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am41 flights85.4%
- 8am–11am33 flights84.8%
- 11am–2pm4 flights—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm60 flights85.5%
- 8pm–5am52 flights71.2%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 85.5% on time. The full set of windows spans 14 points.
Across the year
Spirit on LAS to SMF through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025183 flights80.9%
- Oct–Dec 20257 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 85%. 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 81.6% on time across 190 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on LAS to SMF logged 183 flights in Jul–Sep 2025 and 7 flights in Oct–Dec 2025. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 81.6% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 43% of the 3,197 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.
- 43%National Airspace System
- 41%Carrier
- 15%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, 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 1,325 of the 3,197 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,197 reported delay minutes.
43% 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 1,370 minutes out of 3,197, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 2.11% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.53%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.8% 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.
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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 86.0% on time across 190 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 190 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 Spirit on LAS to SMF
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 190 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 81.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 185 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAS to SMF, every carrier
- Spirit on SMF to LAS, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on LAS to SMF88.2%
- Southwest Airlines on LAS to SMF77.0%
- Frontier Airlines on LAS to SMF76.4%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- Sacramento International (SMF) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.