Carrier route record

OOMSP→SFO

SkyWest Airlines · Minneapolis to San Francisco

Flights: 121
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 6%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on MSP to SFO draws a D+. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 121 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so SkyWest on MSP to SFO runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 171 extra late arrivals.

On time

60.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 118 completed flights

Avg delay

66 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.83%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

66.8%

Every carrier on MSP to SFO, 1,926 flights

These figures cover 121 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Carrier by carrier

SkyWest against every carrier on MSP to SFO

SkyWest flew 121 of the 1,926 flights on MSP to SFO, about 6% of it. Its 60.2% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 66.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 74.6% to SkyWest at 60.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on MSP to SFO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlinesthin sample	356	74.6%	75 min	0.28%	C+
Delta Air Lines	1,449	65.4%	50 min	0.76%	C+
SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample	121	60.2%	66 min	0.83%	D+

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Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 43 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am53 flights82.7%
8am–11am1 flights—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm62 flights40.0%
5pm–8pm5 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 30% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 82.7% of the time, against 40.0% for the afternoon window. That is 43 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 62 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on MSP to SFO through the year

Jul–Sep 20251 flights—
Oct–Dec 202520 flights—
Jan–Mar 20266 flights—
Apr–Jun 202663 flights60.7%
Jul–Sep 202631 flights80.6%

Scale runs 50% to 85%. 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 60.2% on time across 121 flights.

Split by quarter, SkyWest on MSP to SFO logged 1 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 20 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 6 flights in Jan–Mar 2026, 63 flights in Apr–Jun 2026 and 31 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 60.2% annual figure is the one to use.

Arrival by arrival

How late SkyWest on MSP to SFO runs when it is late

The 47 late arrivals split 18 under half an hour, 13 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 16 an hour or more.

15+ min early10 flights8.5%
Within 15 min61 flights51.7%
15–29 min late18 flights15.3%
30–59 min late13 flights11.0%
1–2 hours late11 flights9.3%
2+ hours late5 flights4.2%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 118 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 30 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 3 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 20 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at SFO.

The worst days

Worst days for SkyWest on MSP to SFO

The latest arrival of the period was on 3 January 2026, 5 hours 5 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. Three of the five worst days fell in December 2025.

The latest arrivals of SkyWest on MSP to SFO in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
3 January 2026	5 hours 5 minutes	National Airspace System
26 December 2025	4 hours 48 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
20 December 2025	4 hours 26 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
23 December 2025	3 hours 42 minutes	National Airspace System
24 May 2026	2 hours 54 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

National Airspace System accounts for 61% of the 3,083 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

National Airspace System
61%
Carrier
22%
Late-arriving aircraft
16%
Extreme weather
1%

61% 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 1,889 minutes out of 3,083, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 3,083 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.83%, 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 costs

13.6% 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 1,589 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.5% on time across 123 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 121 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 SkyWest on MSP to SFO

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 121 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 60.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 118 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures