Route reliability record
RNO→SFO
Reno to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,980
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 192 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route draws a D. Roughly one flight in two arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,980 RNO to SFO flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,037 at 60.8% on time.
Best time to fly RNO to SFO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.7% of the time and Saturday flights 71.4%, against 59.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 18 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 180 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
59.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,951 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.36%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
60.8% on time across 1,037 flights
These figures cover 1,980 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.6% 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 RNO 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,037 | 60.8% | 68 min | 2.12% | D |
| United Airlines | 943 | 57.7% | 61 min | 0.53% | D+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 60.8%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on RNO 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 Reno 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. RNO → SFOReno to San Francisco | SkyWest Airlines | 59.5% | 60.8% | 2.12% | 5am–8am, Sat | OO 4779 14:05 |
| 2. RNO → SFOReno to San Francisco | United Airlines | 57.4% | 57.7% | 0.53% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 44 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am377 flights90.7%
- 8am–11am467 flights47.3%
- 11am–2pm215 flights46.7%
- 2pm–5pm531 flights60.0%
- 5pm–8pm278 flights47.0%
- 8pm–5am112 flights52.8%
Scale runs 40% to 95%.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 46.7% on time against 90.7% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 531 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter RNO 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 RNO to SFO, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 90.7% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 46.7%, a wide gap of 44.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am90.7%
- 8–11am47.3%
- 11am–2pm46.7%
- 2–5pm60.0%
- 5–8pm47.0%
- 8pm–5am52.8%
best all US flightsScale 40% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 51 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.
July is the worst month at 34.0% on time, 51 points below January, the best at 84.7%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 191 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 71.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 52.8%, a spread of 19 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
National Airspace System accounts for 62% of the 51,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 62%National Airspace System
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
62% 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 32,000 minutes out of 51,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 51,001 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.36% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.10%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
13.6% 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 192 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 72.0% on time across 1,979 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 1,980 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. January runs 84.7% on time and July 34.0%, a swing of 51 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,951 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RNO to SFO questions
How often is RNO to SFO delayed?
Roughly one flight in two arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 40.7% of the 1,980 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on RNO to SFO?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 60.8% on time across 1,037 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 57.7%, 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 RNO to SFO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.7% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 46.7%, 44 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 July delays on RNO to SFO?
July is the weakest month at 34.0% on time, compared with 84.7% in January. Across the year that is 51 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 RNO — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on RNO to SFO60.8%
- United Airlines on RNO to SFO57.7%
- RNO to LAS, a related route81.4%
- LAX to SFO, a related route60.1%
- RNO to LAX, a related route87.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record60.8%
- United Airlines on-time record57.7%
- 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. RNO to SFO and SFO 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.