Route reliability record
SAN→SMF
San Diego to Sacramento
- Flights
- 5,181
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 480 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land roughly 45 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 5,181 SAN to SMF flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,136 at 80.0% on time.
Best time to fly SAN to SMF: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 85.4%, against 74.5% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
74.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 5,133 completed flights
Avg delay
47 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.87%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
80.0% on time across 1,136 flights
These figures cover 5,181 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 4 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SAN to SMF
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 80.0% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 73.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 3,798 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,136 | 80.0% | 49 min | 1.41% | B |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 247 | 73.4% | 43 min | 2.43% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 3,798 | 73.0% | 47 min | 0.61% | C+ |
SkyWest leads Southwest by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on SAN to SMF
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 San Diego to Sacramento
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. SAN → SMFSan Diego to Sacramento | SkyWest Airlines | 78.9% | 80.0% | 1.41% | 5am–8am, Wed | OO 3439 11:00 |
| 2. SAN → SMFSan Diego to Sacramento | Southwest Airlines | 72.6% | 73.0% | 0.61% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 32 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am457 flights95.6%
- 8am–11am1,149 flights86.7%
- 11am–2pm984 flights73.9%
- 2pm–5pm898 flights66.0%
- 5pm–8pm916 flights67.1%
- 8pm–5am777 flights63.6%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.6% on time, against 95.6% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 1,149 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SAN to SMF 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 SAN to SMF, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 95.6% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 63.6%, a wide gap of 32.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am95.6%
- 8–11am86.7%
- 11am–2pm73.9%
- 2–5pm66.0%
- 5–8pm67.1%
- 8pm–5am63.6%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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.
August is the worst month at 61.1% on time, 21 points below January, the best at 82.4%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 469 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 66.9%, a spread of 19 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 69% of the 61,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 69%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
69% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 61,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 54 to one. The split is drawn from 60,994 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 95.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.87%, below the national 1.89% 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 actually costs
6.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 45 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 480 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 69.8% on time across 5,179 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 5,181 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 SMF 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 82.4% on time and August 61.1%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 5,133 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SAN to SMF questions
How often is SAN to SMF 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 25.5% of the 5,181 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SAN to SMF?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 80.0% on time across 1,136 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 73.0%, a gap of 7 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 SAN to SMF?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 63.6%, 32 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 August delays on SAN to SMF?
August is the weakest month at 61.1% on time, compared with 82.4% in January. Across the year that is 21 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
- SMF to SAN — the return legseparate record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- Sacramento International (SMF) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on SAN to SMF80.0%
- Alaska Airlines on SAN to SMF73.4%
- Southwest Airlines on SAN to SMF73.0%
- SAN to SFO, a related route59.5%
- LAX to SMF, a related route84.8%
- SAN to DEN, a related route78.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record80.0%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record73.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record73.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. SAN to SMF and SMF 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.