Carrier route record

F9LAX→SMF

Frontier Airlines · Los Angeles to Sacramento

Flights: 204
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 4%
Carriers: 5

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

Frontier on LAX to SMF lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 204 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 3,517 at 87.8% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's LAX to SMF record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 59 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 200 completed flights

Avg delay

56 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.96%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

84.6%

Every carrier on LAX to SMF, 5,634 flights

These figures cover 204 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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

Frontier against every carrier on LAX to SMF

Frontier flew 204 of the 5,634 flights on LAX to SMF, about 4% of it. Its 83.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 84.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 87.8% to Delta at 67.0%. Two 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 87.8% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 79.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,614 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on LAX to SMF
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	3,517	87.8%	74 min	0.43%	A+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	204	83.5%	56 min	1.96%	B
United Airlinesthin sample	201	83.5%	42 min	0.00%	B+
Southwest Airlines	1,614	79.0%	53 min	0.19%	B+
Delta Air Linesthin sample	98	67.0%	66 min	1.02%	C

SkyWest leads Southwest by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Departure window

When Frontier runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 18 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am13 flights—
8am–11am68 flights90.9%
11am–2pm45 flights86.7%
2pm–5pm36 flights77.8%
5pm–8pm42 flights73.2%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.9% of the time, against 73.2% for the evening window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 68 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on LAX to SMF through the year

Jul–Sep 202526 flights—
Oct–Dec 202553 flights84.6%
Jan–Mar 202646 flights80.0%
Apr–Jun 202679 flights83.1%

Scale runs 70% to 90%. 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 83.5% on time across 204 flights.

Quarter by quarter Frontier on LAX to SMF held fairly steady: 84.6% in Oct–Dec 2025, 80.0% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 83.1% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 95.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 81.6%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 1,835 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
59%
Carrier
21%
Extreme weather
12%
National Airspace System
7%

Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 1,835 reported delay minutes.

59% 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 1,835 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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.

Cancellations sit at 1.96% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.0% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

At 373 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.9% on time across 204 flights, 10 points below 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 204 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 Frontier on LAX to SMF

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 204 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 83.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 200 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