Route reliability record
MFR→SFO
Medford to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,031
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 329 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,031 MFR to SFO flights, of which United Airlines flew 406 at 73.6% on time.
Best time to fly MFR to SFO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 74.3%, against 70.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 73 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,022 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.78%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
73.6% on time across 406 flights
These figures cover 1,031 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% 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
Which airline is most reliable on MFR to SFO
The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 406 | 73.6% | 53 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 625 | 68.0% | 79 min | 1.28% | C |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 73.6%, 6 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 | United Airlines | 73.6% | 73.6% | 0.00% | 5am–8am, Sun | — |
| 2. MFR → SFOMedford to San Francisco | SkyWest Airlines | 67.1% | 68.0% | 1.28% | 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 25 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am345 flights87.2%
- 8am–11am16 flights—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm365 flights61.8%
- 5pm–8pm305 flights62.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.2% of the time, against 61.8% for the afternoon window. That is 25 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.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 41 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 48.3% on time, 41 points below August, the best at 89.2%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 74.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 65.4%. 9 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. National Airspace System accounts for 50% of the 21,000 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.
- 50%National Airspace System
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Carrier
- 11%Extreme weather
50% 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 11,000 minutes out of 21,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 21,179 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.78%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.0% 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 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 79.2% on time across 1,029 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,031 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. 1,031 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 70.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,022 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 29.7% of the 1,031 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MFR to SFO?
United Airlines leads at 73.6% on time across 406 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 68.0%, a gap of 6 points. 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 87.2% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 61.8%, 25 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 MFR to SFO?
June is the weakest month at 48.3% on time, compared with 89.2% in August. Across the year that is 41 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
- United Airlines on MFR to SFO73.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on MFR to SFO68.0%
- MFR to SEA, a related route91.0%
- LAX to SFO, a related route64.8%
- MFR to PHX, a related route86.8%
- United Airlines on-time record73.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record68.0%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.