Route reliability record
RNO→SAN
Reno to San Diego
- Flights
- 1,162
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 488 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,162 RNO to SAN flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
Best time to fly RNO to SAN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 80.1%, against 72.8% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 48 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,145 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.20%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
71.2% on time across 924 flights
These figures cover 1,162 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on RNO to SAN
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 9 | 88.9% | 20 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 229 | 78.5% | 60 min | 4.37% | B− |
| Southwest Airlines | 924 | 71.2% | 49 min | 0.43% | C+ |
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 51 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–8am375 flights90.2%
- 8am–11am192 flights75.9%
- 11am–2pm230 flights66.4%
- 2pm–5pm210 flights67.3%
- 5pm–8pm117 flights39.7%
- 8pm–5am38 flights56.8%
Scale runs 30% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 39.7% on time, against 90.2% 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 375 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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.
June is the worst month at 62.0% on time, 22 points below January, the best at 84.0%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 131 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 67.2%. 13 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 43% of the 16,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%National Airspace System
- 18%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
43% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 23 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 15,748 reported delay minutes.
38% 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 5,928 minutes out of 16,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.20% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.26%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.1% 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 about 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 488 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 76.8% on time across 1,161 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,162 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 SAN 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 84.0% on time and June 62.0%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,145 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RNO to SAN questions
How often is RNO to SAN delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.2% of the 1,162 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is RNO to SAN compared with the rest of the country?
72.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on RNO to SAN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 39.7%, 51 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 June delays on RNO to SAN?
June is the weakest month at 62.0% on time, compared with 84.0% in January. Across the year that is 22 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
- SAN to RNO — the return legseparate record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on RNO to SAN78.5%
- Southwest Airlines on RNO to SAN71.2%
- RNO to LAS, a related route82.1%
- SFO to SAN, a related route66.6%
- RNO to DEN, a related route85.8%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record88.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record78.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record71.2%
- 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. RNO to SAN and SAN to RNO 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.