Carrier route record

WNPDX→SMF

Southwest Airlines · Portland to Sacramento

Flights: 1,205
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 61%
Carriers: 3

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

Southwest on PDX to SMF lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five 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 1,205 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on PDX to SMF from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

78.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,201 completed flights

Avg delay

51 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.17%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.4%

Every carrier on PDX to SMF, 1,989 flights

These figures cover 1,205 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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

Southwest against every carrier on PDX to SMF

Southwest flew 1,205 of the 1,989 flights on PDX to SMF, most of the route. Its 78.5% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 82.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last 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	456	84.6%	59 min	0.22%	B+
Southwest Airlines (this page)	1,205	78.5%	51 min	0.17%	B+

Departure window

When Southwest 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. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am362 flights97.5%
8am–11am99 flights77.8%
11am–2pm231 flights80.0%
2pm–5pm72 flights66.7%
5pm–8pm239 flights72.8%
8pm–5am202 flights54.5%

Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 54.5% on time, against 97.5% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 362 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on PDX to SMF through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.January best, June worst

June is the worst month at 64.5% on time, 27 points below January, the best at 91.0%. 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 123 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 88.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 67.0%. 22 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 77% of the 13,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
77%
Carrier
18%
National Airspace System
5%
Security
1%

77% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 77 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 13,202 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 97.5% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.17%, 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

5.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

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 79.2% on time across 1,205 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 1,205 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.

What to do with this

Booking Southwest on PDX to SMF

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 91.0% on time and June 64.5%, a swing of 27 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,201 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