Route reliability record
SFO→GEG
San Francisco to Spokane
- Flights
- 867
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 733 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, 2 points 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 867 SFO to GEG flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly SFO to GEG: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.3% of the time and Saturday flights 84.7%, against 76.0% 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
76.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 862 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.35%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
75.7% on time across 815 flights
These figures cover 867 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 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
Which airline is most reliable on SFO to GEG
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 52 | 80.8% | 45 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 815 | 75.7% | 65 min | 0.37% | B+ |
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 21 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–8am—
- 8am–11am306 flights84.3%
- 11am–2pm157 flights63.1%
- 2pm–5pm102 flights72.3%
- 5pm–8pm120 flights83.1%
- 8pm–5am182 flights70.7%
Scale runs 55% 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 63.1% on time against 84.3% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 306 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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 56.1% on time, 32 points below January, the best at 88.4%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 98 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 67.2%. 18 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 13,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%National Airspace System
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 8%Extreme weather
38% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 5,018 minutes out of 13,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 13,201 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 84.3% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.35%, below the national 1.81% 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
7.4% 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 an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 733 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 73.7% on time across 873 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 867 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in GEG after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 867 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 76.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 862 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to GEG questions
How often is SFO to GEG 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 24.0% of the 867 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is SFO to GEG compared with the rest of the country?
76.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 2 points against it. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SFO to GEG?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 84.3% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 63.1%, 21 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 GEG?
June is the weakest month at 56.1% on time, compared with 88.4% in January. Across the year that is 32 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
- GEG to SFO — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- SFO to LAX, a related route73.9%
- SEA to GEG, a related route82.5%
- SFO to SEA, a related route73.7%
- United Airlines on-time record80.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record75.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. SFO to GEG and GEG 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.