Carrier route record

MQPHX→SMF

Envoy Air · Phoenix to Sacramento

Flights: 112
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 3%
Carriers: 4

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

Envoy on PHX to SMF earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 50 minutes. That rests on 112 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 1,079 at 82.4% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Envoy's PHX to SMF record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 79 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 110 completed flights

Avg delay

51 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.89%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.2%

Every carrier on PHX to SMF, 3,673 flights

These figures cover 112 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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

Envoy against every carrier on PHX to SMF

Envoy flew 112 of the 3,673 flights on PHX to SMF, about 3% of it. Its 85.5% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 85.5% to Southwest at 78.9%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 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.

On-time performance by carrier on PHX to SMF
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air (this page)thin sample	112	85.5%	51 min	0.89%	A+
American Airlines	1,079	82.4%	64 min	0.46%	B+
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	333	80.1%	60 min	0.30%	B+
Southwest Airlines	2,149	78.9%	47 min	0.33%	B+

No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 82.4%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Departure window

When Envoy runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 112 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Envoy's PHX to SMF record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 85.5% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Envoy on PHX to SMF through the year

Jul–Sep 202520 flights—
Oct–Dec 20258 flights—
Apr–Jun 202684 flights85.5%

Scale runs 75% to 90%. 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 85.5% on time across 112 flights.

Split by quarter, Envoy on PHX to SMF logged 20 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 8 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 84 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 85.5% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Envoy runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 71% of the 810 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
71%
Carrier
22%
National Airspace System
7%

71% 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 810 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 71 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 810 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 85.7% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.89%, 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 2.7% 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.

The 647 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.2% on time across 112 flights, 5 points below 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 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 112 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 Envoy on PHX to SMF

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 112 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 85.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 110 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