Carrier route record

OOPDX→SMF

SkyWest Airlines · Portland to Sacramento

Flights: 456
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 23%
Carriers: 3

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

SkyWest on PDX to SMF earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 456 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's PDX to SMF record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 70 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 454 completed flights

Avg delay

59 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.22%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.4%

Every carrier on PDX to SMF, 1,989 flights

These figures cover 456 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 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

SkyWest against every carrier on PDX to SMF

SkyWest flew 456 of the 1,989 flights on PDX to SMF, about 23% of it. Its 84.6% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 93.8% to Southwest at 78.5%. 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 PDX to SMF
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Alaska Airlinesthin sample	328	93.8%	40 min	0.91%	A+
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	456	84.6%	59 min	0.22%	B+
Southwest Airlines	1,205	78.5%	51 min	0.17%	B+

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 11 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–8am—
8am–11am48 flights85.4%
11am–2pm28 flights—
2pm–5pm141 flights90.1%
5pm–8pm190 flights81.5%
8pm–5am49 flights79.2%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 90.1% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 79.2%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 190 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on PDX to SMF through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.November best, December worst

December is the weak month at 78.9% on time, against 90.0% in November. 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 92 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 93.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 74.6%. 19 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 4,130 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
45%
Carrier
37%
National Airspace System
15%
Extreme weather
4%

45% 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 4,130 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 4,130 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,509 of the 4,130 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.22%, 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 costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% 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 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 84.7% on time across 444 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 456 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 PDX to SMF

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 456 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 84.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 454 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures