Route reliability record
PDX→SMF
Portland to Sacramento
- Flights
- 1,989
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 479 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,989 PDX to SMF flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 456 at 84.6% on time.
Best time to fly PDX to SMF: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 97.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 90.9%, against 82.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 48 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,980 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.30%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
84.6% on time across 456 flights
These figures cover 1,989 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 PDX to SMF
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 84.6% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 78.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,205 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 328 | 93.8% | 40 min | 0.91% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 456 | 84.6% | 59 min | 0.22% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,205 | 78.5% | 51 min | 0.17% | B+ |
SkyWest leads Southwest by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Portland to Sacramento
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. PDX → SMFPortland to Sacramento | SkyWest Airlines | 84.4% | 84.6% | 0.22% | 2pm–5pm, Tue | — |
| 2. PDX → SMFPortland to Sacramento | Southwest Airlines | 78.4% | 78.5% | 0.17% | 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 38 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am418 flights97.6%
- 8am–11am238 flights85.2%
- 11am–2pm274 flights80.8%
- 2pm–5pm294 flights85.7%
- 5pm–8pm513 flights79.1%
- 8pm–5am252 flights59.4%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 59.4% on time, against 97.6% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 513 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.
December is the weak month at 73.7% on time, against 89.9% in January. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. July was the busiest month here, with 215 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 74.5%. 16 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 69% of the 18,000 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.
- 69%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
69% 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 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 69 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 18,138 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 97.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.30%, 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 4.5% 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 479 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 82.3% on time across 1,977 flights, within half a point 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 1,989 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. January runs 89.9% on time and December 73.7%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,980 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PDX to SMF questions
How often is PDX to SMF delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.6% of the 1,989 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on PDX to SMF?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 84.6% on time across 456 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 78.5%, 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 PDX to SMF?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 97.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 59.4%, 38 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 December delays on PDX to SMF?
December is the weakest month at 73.7% on time, compared with 89.9% in January. 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 PDX — the return legseparate record
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- Sacramento International (SMF) delay statistics
- Alaska Airlines on PDX to SMF93.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on PDX to SMF84.6%
- Southwest Airlines on PDX to SMF78.5%
- PDX to SEA, a related route84.8%
- LAX to SMF, a related route84.6%
- PDX to LAX, a related route87.4%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record93.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record84.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record78.5%
- 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. PDX to SMF and SMF to PDX 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.