Route reliability record
SFO→GEG
San Francisco to Spokane
- Flights
- 885
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 733 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 885 SFO to GEG flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly SFO to GEG: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.1% of the time and Saturday flights 81.9%, against 74.0% 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
74.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 878 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.56%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
73.6% on time across 834 flights
These figures cover 885 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.2% 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 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 | 51 | 80.4% | 45 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 834 | 73.6% | 66 min | 0.60% | C+ |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 40 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am349 flights84.1%
- 11am–2pm152 flights44.1%
- 2pm–5pm93 flights71.7%
- 5pm–8pm120 flights83.1%
- 8pm–5am171 flights75.1%
Scale runs 35% 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 44.1% on time against 84.1% 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 349 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SFO to GEG 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 GEG, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 84.1% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 44.1%, a wide gap of 40.0 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am84.1%
- 11am–2pm44.1%
- 2–5pm71.7%
- 5–8pm83.1%
- 8pm–5am75.1%
best all US flightsScale 35% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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. July was the busiest month here, with 110 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 81.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 62.9%, a spread of 19 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
National Airspace System accounts for 43% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%National Airspace System
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 14,788 reported delay minutes.
43% 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 6,292 minutes out of 15,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.56%, 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
9.2% 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.
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.
The return leg runs 72.2% on time across 890 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. 885 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. 885 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 74.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 878 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 26.0% of the 885 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is SFO to GEG compared with the rest of the country?
74.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 3 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 GEG?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 84.1% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 44.1%, 40 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 route70.9%
- SEA to GEG, a related route83.1%
- SFO to SEA, a related route72.3%
- United Airlines on-time record80.4%
- 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 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.