Carrier route record
OOSAN→RNO
SkyWest Airlines · San Diego to Reno
- Flights
- 228
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 20%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on SAN to RNO earns an A−. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 55 minutes. That rests on 228 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's SAN to RNO record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 90 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 216 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.82%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.8%
Every carrier on SAN to RNO, 1,161 flights
These figures cover 228 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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
SkyWest against every carrier on SAN to RNO
SkyWest flew 228 of the 1,161 flights on SAN to RNO, about 20% of it. Its 86.6% on time is 10 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 100.0% to Southwest at 74.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 Airlines (this page)thin sample | 228 | 86.6% | 54 min | 4.82% | A− |
| Southwest Airlines | 924 | 74.2% | 50 min | 0.76% | C+ |
Departure window
When SkyWest runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 228 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am105 flights90.2%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm11 flights—
- 8pm–5am112 flights82.5%
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 90.2% on time for the 8am–11am window against 82.5% for 8pm–5am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 112 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on SAN to RNO through the year
- Oct–Dec 2025119 flights84.1%
- Jan–Mar 202644 flights87.8%
- Apr–Jun 202665 flights90.3%
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 86.6% on time across 228 flights.
Quarter by quarter SkyWest on SAN to RNO held fairly steady: 84.1% in Oct–Dec 2025, 87.8% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 90.3% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 90.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 78.8%. 12 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 1,577 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.
- 59%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%National Airspace System
- 15%Extreme weather
- 11%Carrier
Extreme weather accounts for 15% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 1,577 reported delay minutes.
59% 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 1,577 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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.
Cancellations run at 4.82%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.2% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
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 78.5% on time across 229 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 228 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 SAN to RNO
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.82% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 55 minutes; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 216 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.