Route reliability record
MFR→SFO
Medford to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,019
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 329 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route draws a D+. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,019 MFR to SFO flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 622 at 64.1% on time.
Best time to fly MFR to SFO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 68.5%, against 63.7% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 136 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,010 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.79%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
64.1% on time across 622 flights
These figures cover 1,019 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MFR to SFO
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 622 | 64.1% | 81 min | 1.29% | D |
| United Airlines | 397 | 63.0% | 54 min | 0.00% | D+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 64.1%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Medford to San Francisco
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MFR → SFOMedford to San Francisco | SkyWest Airlines | 63.3% | 64.1% | 1.29% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 2. MFR → SFOMedford to San Francisco | United Airlines | 63.0% | 63.0% | 0.00% | 5am–8am, Sun | — |
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 33 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am343 flights85.0%
- 8am–11am18 flights—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm365 flights52.2%
- 5pm–8pm293 flights53.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 85.0% of the time, against 52.2% for the afternoon window. That is 33 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MFR to SFO by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On MFR to SFO, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 85.0% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 52.2%, a wide gap of 32.8 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am85.0%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm52.2%
- 5–8pm53.3%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 44 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.
July is the worst month at 43.5% on time, 44 points below March, the best at 87.1%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 68.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 58.8%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
National Airspace System accounts for 51% of the 26,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%National Airspace System
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%Carrier
- 13%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 25,775 reported delay minutes.
51% 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 13,000 minutes out of 26,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.79%, below the national 1.89% 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
11.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 329 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.0% on time across 1,017 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,019 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in SFO after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,019 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 63.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,010 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MFR to SFO questions
How often is MFR to SFO delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 36.3% of the 1,019 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MFR to SFO?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 64.1% on time across 622 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 63.0%, a gap of about a point. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MFR to SFO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.0% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 52.2%, 33 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 July delays on MFR to SFO?
July is the weakest month at 43.5% on time, compared with 87.1% in March. Across the year that is 44 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
- SFO to MFR — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on MFR to SFO64.1%
- United Airlines on MFR to SFO63.0%
- MFR to SEA, a related route89.4%
- LAX to SFO, a related route60.1%
- MFR to PHX, a related route84.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record64.1%
- United Airlines on-time record63.0%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. MFR to SFO and SFO to MFR 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.