Route reliability record
SFO→FAT
San Francisco to Fresno
- Flights
- 1,285
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 158 mi
- Carriers
- 1
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, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 1,285 SFO to FAT flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly SFO to FAT: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 82.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 81.6%, against 73.6% 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
73.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,265 completed flights
Avg delay
97 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.48%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
73.6% on time across 1,285 flights
These figures cover 1,285 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SFO to FAT
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 | 73.6% | 97 min | 1.48% | C |
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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 13 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am261 flights82.8%
- 11am–2pm272 flights69.7%
- 2pm–5pm219 flights71.4%
- 5pm–8pm162 flights76.7%
- 8pm–5am371 flights69.9%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 69.7% on time against 82.8% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 371 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SFO to FAT 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 SFO to FAT, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 82.8% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 69.7%, a wide gap of 13.1 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am82.8%
- 11am–2pm69.7%
- 2–5pm71.4%
- 5–8pm76.7%
- 8pm–5am69.9%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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.
February is the weak month at 60.7% on time, against 86.6% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. August was the busiest month here, with 151 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 66.8%, a spread of 15 points.
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 32,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Carrier
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 12,000 of the 32,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 32,475 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 82.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.48% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.08%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
11.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 158 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 63.2% on time across 1,284 flights, 10 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 10 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 FAT 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. September runs 86.6% on time and February 60.7%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of February before you think about anything else. 1,265 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to FAT questions
How often is SFO to FAT 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 26.4% of the 1,285 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is SFO to FAT compared with the rest of the country?
73.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 4 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SFO to FAT?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 82.8% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 69.7%, 13 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 February delays on SFO to FAT?
February is the weakest month at 60.7% on time, compared with 86.6% in September. Across the year that is 26 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
- FAT to SFO — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- SFO to LAX, a related route70.9%
- SAN to FAT, a related route77.8%
- SFO to SEA, a related route72.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record73.6%
- 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. SFO to FAT and FAT 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.