Route reliability record
LGB→SMF
Long Beach to Sacramento
- Flights
- 1,893
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 387 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 50 minutes. That rests on 1,893 LGB to SMF flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly LGB to SMF: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 98.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 94.8%, against 87.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 101 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,886 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.32%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
87.7% on time across 1,893 flights
These figures cover 1,893 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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
Which airline is most reliable on LGB to SMF
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,893 | 87.7% | 50 min | 0.32% | A+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Long Beach to Sacramento
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LAX → SMFLos Angeles to Sacramento | SkyWest Airlines | 87.4% | 87.8% | 0.43% | 8am–11am, Tue | OO 3755 09:15 |
| 2. LGB → SMFLong Beach to Sacramento | Southwest Airlines | 87.4% | 87.7% | 0.32% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. ONT → SMFOntario to Sacramento | Southwest Airlines | 85.5% | 85.7% | 0.19% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 4. SNA → SMFSanta Ana to Sacramento | Southwest Airlines | 85.1% | 85.8% | 0.82% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 5. BUR → SMFBurbank to Sacramento | Southwest Airlines | 85.0% | 86.5% | 1.78% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 23 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–8am252 flights98.4%
- 8am–11am461 flights93.2%
- 11am–2pm266 flights90.2%
- 2pm–5pm382 flights83.7%
- 5pm–8pm440 flights80.4%
- 8pm–5am92 flights75.0%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 98.4% of the time, against 75.0% for the overnight window. That is 23 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 461 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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.
June is the worst month at 77.5% on time, 16 points below April, the best at 93.0%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 173 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 94.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 83.4%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 82% of the 12,000 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.
- 82%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
82% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 82 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. The split is drawn from 11,534 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 98.4% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.32%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.2% 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 387 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 runs 85.6% on time across 1,893 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,893 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 SMF 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. April runs 93.0% on time and June 77.5%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,886 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LGB to SMF questions
How often is LGB to SMF delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 12.3% of the 1,893 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is LGB to SMF compared with the rest of the country?
87.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 10 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LGB to SMF?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 98.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 75.0%, 23 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 June delays on LGB to SMF?
June is the weakest month at 77.5% on time, compared with 93.0% in April. Across the year that is 16 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
- SMF to LGB — the return legseparate record
- Sacramento International (SMF) delay statistics
- LGB to LAS, a related route81.3%
- LAX to SMF, a related route84.6%
- LGB to OAK, a related route89.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record87.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. LGB to SMF and SMF to LGB are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.