Carrier route record
UALAX→SMF
United Airlines · Los Angeles to Sacramento
- Flights
- 202
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 4%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on LAX to SMF lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 40 minutes on average. That rests on 202 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 3,559 at 87.7% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, United's LAX to SMF record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 63 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 201 completed flights
Avg delay
42 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
84.8%
Every carrier on LAX to SMF, 5,708 flights
These figures cover 202 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on LAX to SMF
United flew 202 of the 5,708 flights on LAX to SMF, about 4% of it. Its 83.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 84.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 89.1% to Southwest at 79.0%. 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 87.7% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 79.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,650 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 55 | 89.1% | 51 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 3,559 | 87.7% | 76 min | 0.37% | A+ |
| United Airlines (this page)thin sample | 202 | 83.6% | 42 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 242 | 81.0% | 58 min | 2.07% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,650 | 79.0% | 54 min | 0.24% | B+ |
SkyWest leads Southwest by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 202 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am105 flights86.5%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm89 flights80.9%
- 8pm–5am8 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 86.5% on time for the 8am–11am window against 80.9% for 5pm–8pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 105 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on LAX to SMF through the year
- Oct–Dec 202518 flights—
- Jan–Mar 2026104 flights81.6%
- Apr–Jun 202679 flights83.5%
- Jul–Sep 20261 flights—
Scale runs 75% 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 83.6% on time across 202 flights.
Split by quarter, United on LAX to SMF logged 18 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 104 flights in Jan–Mar 2026, 79 flights in Apr–Jun 2026 and 1 flights in Jul–Sep 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 83.6% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 88.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.5%, a spread of 15 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on LAX to SMF runs when it is late
Most of the lateness is short. 17 of the 33 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 7 reached an hour or more. Not one arrived two hours late.
- 15+ min early47 flights23.4%
- Within 15 min121 flights60.2%
- 15–29 min late17 flights8.5%
- 30–59 min late9 flights4.5%
- 1–2 hours late7 flights3.5%
- 2+ hours late0 flights0.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 201 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
4 of 29 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. 8 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on LAX to SMF
The latest arrival of the period was on 26 April 2026, 1 hour 53 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in April 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 26 April 2026 | 1 hour 53 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 April 2026 | 1 hour 46 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 April 2026 | 1 hour 33 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 March 2026 | 1 hour 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 15 March 2026 | 1 hour 19 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 1,375 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 1,375 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 53 to one. The split is drawn from 1,375 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 86.5% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.5% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 91.6% on time across 202 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 202 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 United on LAX to SMF
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 202 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 83.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 201 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to SMF, every carrier
- United on SMF to LAX, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on LAX to SMF87.7%
- Frontier Airlines on LAX to SMF81.0%
- Southwest Airlines on LAX to SMF79.0%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Sacramento International (SMF) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best day of the week to fly, and why it is the second lever
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.