Route reliability record
SFO→ACV
San Francisco to Arcata/Eureka
- Flights
- 1,285
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 250 mi
- Carriers
- 1
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 an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,285 SFO to ACV flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly SFO to ACV: a 2pm–5pm departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 78.1% of the time and Saturday flights 81.8%, against 76.4% 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
76.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,214 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.72%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
76.4% on time across 1,285 flights
These figures cover 1,285 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.1% 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
Which airline is most reliable on SFO to ACV
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 | 1,285 | 76.4% | 91 min | 2.72% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on SFO to ACV
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.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 1,285 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am344 flights76.7%
- 11am–2pm255 flights73.5%
- 2pm–5pm309 flights78.1%
- 5pm–8pm9 flights—
- 8pm–5am368 flights76.7%
Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The overnight block holds up unusually well at 76.7% on time across 368 flights. Red-eyes fly into empty airspace and empty gates, and they are the first rotation of the aircraft's day rather than the last. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 368 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 35 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.
June is the worst month at 55.7% on time, 35 points below March, the best at 90.6%. 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 122 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 81.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.3%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 26,000 reported delay minutes.
- 26%Carrier
- 26%Extreme weather
- 25%National Airspace System
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 26% 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 4.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 26,165 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.72%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.1% 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 250 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 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 63.8% on time across 1,283 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,285 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 ACV 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. March runs 90.6% on time and June 55.7%, a swing of 35 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,214 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to ACV questions
How often is SFO to ACV 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 23.6% of the 1,285 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is SFO to ACV compared with the rest of the country?
76.4% 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 SFO to ACV?
The 2pm–5pm departure window is the strongest at 78.1% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 73.5%, 5 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 June delays on SFO to ACV?
June is the weakest month at 55.7% on time, compared with 90.6% in March. Across the year that is 35 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
- ACV to SFO — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- SFO to LAX, a related route73.9%
- SFO to SEA, a related route73.7%
- SFO to JFK, a related route80.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record76.4%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. SFO to ACV and ACV to SFO 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.