Route reliability record
SAN→RNO
San Diego to Reno
- Flights
- 1,161
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 488 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,161 SAN to RNO flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly SAN to RNO: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.2% of the time and Saturday flights 88.7%, against 76.8% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,141 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.55%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
74.2% on time across 924 flights
These figures cover 1,161 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SAN to RNO
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 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 228 | 86.6% | 54 min | 4.82% | A− |
| Southwest Airlines | 924 | 74.2% | 50 min | 0.76% | 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 38 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–8am27 flights—
- 8am–11am434 flights90.2%
- 11am–2pm18 flights—
- 2pm–5pm153 flights52.0%
- 5pm–8pm169 flights74.3%
- 8pm–5am360 flights70.2%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.2% of the time, against 52.0% for the afternoon window. That is 38 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 434 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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.
Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 63.6%. January is the strongest month at 88.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 24 points. December was the busiest month here, with 131 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 88.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 66.5%. 22 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 71% of the 13,000 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.
- 71%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
71% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 42 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 13,478 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.55% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.3% 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.8% on time across 1,162 flights, 4 points below 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 1,161 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 RNO 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 88.0% on time and April 63.6%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of April before you think about anything else. 1,141 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SAN to RNO questions
How often is SAN to RNO delayed?
About 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 23.2% of the 1,161 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is SAN to RNO compared with the rest of the country?
76.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SAN to RNO?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.2% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 52.0%, 38 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 April delays on SAN to RNO?
April is the weakest month at 63.6% on time, compared with 88.0% in January. Across the year that is 24 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
- RNO to SAN — the return legseparate record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on SAN to RNO86.6%
- Southwest Airlines on SAN to RNO74.2%
- SAN to SFO, a related route65.0%
- LAS to RNO, a related route79.7%
- SAN to DEN, a related route79.2%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record100.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record86.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record74.2%
- 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. SAN to RNO and RNO to SAN 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.