Carrier route record
OOSAN→SMF
SkyWest Airlines · San Diego to Sacramento
- Flights
- 1,185
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 23%
- 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 SMF lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five 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 1,185 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on SAN to SMF from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,167 completed flights
Avg delay
49 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.35%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.4%
Every carrier on SAN to SMF, 5,177 flights
These figures cover 1,185 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 SMF
SkyWest flew 1,185 of the 5,177 flights on SAN to SMF, about 23% of it. Its 79.5% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 79.5% to Southwest at 75.5%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 1,185 | 79.5% | 49 min | 1.35% | B |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 185 | 77.2% | 43 min | 2.70% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 3,807 | 75.5% | 47 min | 0.55% | B+ |
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on SAN to SMF
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 27 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–8am35 flights100.0%
- 8am–11am343 flights87.5%
- 11am–2pm285 flights74.5%
- 2pm–5pm89 flights75.3%
- 5pm–8pm246 flights77.8%
- 8pm–5am187 flights73.1%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 100.0% of the time, against 73.1% for the overnight window. That is 27 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 343 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on SAN to SMF through the year
April is the best month on the calendar at 93.8% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 123 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 86.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 69.1%. 18 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 56% of the 12,000 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.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 19%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
56% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 11,780 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 100.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.35% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.7% 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 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 runs 79.0% on time across 1,187 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,185 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.
What to do with this
Booking SkyWest on SAN to SMF
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 93.8% on time and October 67.4%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of October before you think about anything else. 1,167 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SAN to SMF, every carrier
- SkyWest on SMF to SAN, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on SAN to SMF77.2%
- Southwest Airlines on SAN to SMF75.5%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- Sacramento International (SMF) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- 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.