Carrier route record
OORNO→SFO
SkyWest Airlines · Reno to San Francisco
- Flights
- 992
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 52%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on RNO to SFO draws a D. About one flight in three 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 992 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on RNO to SFO runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 137 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 968 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.22%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
64.7%
Every carrier on RNO to SFO, 1,897 flights
These figures cover 992 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on RNO to SFO
SkyWest flew 992 of the 1,897 flights on RNO to SFO, most of the route. Its 63.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 64.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 65.6% to SkyWest at 63.9%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 905 | 65.6% | 62 min | 0.55% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 992 | 63.9% | 66 min | 2.22% | D |
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on RNO to SFO
Departure window
When SkyWest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 62 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–8am89 flights93.3%
- 8am–11am239 flights67.5%
- 11am–2pm94 flights31.2%
- 2pm–5pm302 flights63.4%
- 5pm–8pm198 flights63.7%
- 8pm–5am70 flights61.2%
Scale runs 25% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 31.2% on time against 93.3% 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 302 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on RNO to SFO through the year
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 33.7%. March is the strongest month at 82.8%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 49 points. December was the busiest month here, with 122 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 79.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 54.2%. 25 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 54% of the 23,000 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.
- 54%National Airspace System
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
54% 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 13,000 minutes out of 23,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 23,028 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.22% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.20%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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 74.6% on time across 992 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 992 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 SkyWest on RNO to SFO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 992 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 63.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 968 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RNO to SFO, every carrier
- SkyWest on SFO to RNO, the return leg
- United Airlines on RNO to SFO65.6%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.