Carrier route record
UARNO→SFO
United Airlines · Reno to San Francisco
- Flights
- 905
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 48%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on RNO to SFO draws a C+. 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 905 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so United on RNO to SFO runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 120 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 900 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
64.7%
Every carrier on RNO to SFO, 1,897 flights
These figures cover 905 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.2% 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
United against every carrier on RNO to SFO
United flew 905 of the 1,897 flights on RNO to SFO, about 48% of it. Its 65.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 64.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first 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 (this page) | 905 | 65.6% | 62 min | 0.55% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 992 | 63.9% | 66 min | 2.22% | D |
Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 71 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–8am281 flights91.1%
- 8am–11am234 flights41.1%
- 11am–2pm59 flights78.0%
- 2pm–5pm201 flights71.0%
- 5pm–8pm34 flights20.6%
- 8pm–5am96 flights46.3%
Scale runs 10% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 20.6% on time, against 91.1% 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 281 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on RNO to SFO through the year
June is the worst month at 20.0% on time, 73 points below January, the best at 92.8%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 113 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 74.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.4%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 65% of the 19,000 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.
- 65%National Airspace System
- 18%Carrier
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
65% 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 12,000 minutes out of 19,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 19,113 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.2% 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 76.5% on time across 905 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. 905 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 United on RNO to SFO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 905 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 65.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 900 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.