Route reliability record
RDM→SFO
Redmond to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,311
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 462 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route draws a D+. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,311 RDM to SFO flights, of which United Airlines flew 656 at 63.2% on time.
Best time to fly RDM to SFO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 69.8%, against 61.8% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 155 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
61.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,292 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.92%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
63.2% on time across 656 flights
These figures cover 1,311 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on RDM to SFO
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 656 | 63.2% | 64 min | 0.46% | D+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 655 | 60.3% | 77 min | 1.37% | D |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 63.2%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on RDM to SFO
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Redmond to San Francisco
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. RDM → SFORedmond to San Francisco | United Airlines | 62.9% | 63.2% | 0.46% | 5am–8am, Thu | UA 2262 13:55 |
| 2. RDM → SFORedmond to San Francisco | SkyWest Airlines | 59.5% | 60.3% | 1.37% | 5am–8am, Wed | OO 5534 19:50 |
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 68 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am400 flights87.5%
- 8am–11am41 flights53.8%
- 11am–2pm87 flights19.5%
- 2pm–5pm388 flights55.4%
- 5pm–8pm294 flights45.5%
- 8pm–5am101 flights72.3%
Scale runs 10% to 95%.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 19.5% on time against 87.5% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 400 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter RDM to SFO by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On RDM to SFO, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 87.5% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 19.5%, a wide gap of 68.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am87.5%
- 8–11am53.8%
- 11am–2pm19.5%
- 2–5pm55.4%
- 5–8pm45.5%
- 8pm–5am72.3%
best all US flightsScale 10% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 35 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.
August is the worst month at 45.5% on time, 35 points below March, the best at 80.0%. 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 140 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 69.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 55.2%, a spread of 15 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
National Airspace System accounts for 53% of the 35,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
53% 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 19,000 minutes out of 35,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 34,886 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 0.92% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.53%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
15.3% 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 462 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.6% on time across 1,310 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,311 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 SFO 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. March runs 80.0% on time and August 45.5%, a swing of 35 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,292 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RDM to SFO questions
How often is RDM to SFO delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 38.2% of the 1,311 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on RDM to SFO?
United Airlines leads at 63.2% on time across 656 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 60.3%, a gap of 3 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 RDM to SFO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.5% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 19.5%, 68 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 August delays on RDM to SFO?
August is the weakest month at 45.5% on time, compared with 80.0% in March. Across the year that is 35 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
- SFO to RDM — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- United Airlines on RDM to SFO63.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on RDM to SFO60.3%
- RDM to SEA, a related route85.2%
- LAX to SFO, a related route60.1%
- RDM to PHX, a related route91.0%
- United Airlines on-time record63.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record60.3%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. RDM to SFO and SFO to RDM 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.