Route reliability record
SFO→MRY
San Francisco to Monterey
- Flights
- 780
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 77 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 780 SFO to MRY flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly SFO to MRY: a 5pm–8pm departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.5% of the time and Saturday flights 84.8%, against 72.6% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 47 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 773 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.38%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
72.6% on time across 780 flights
These figures cover 780 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.5% 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 MRY
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 | 780 | 72.6% | 89 min | 0.38% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on SFO to MRY
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.
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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 21 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am277 flights74.6%
- 11am–2pm3 flights—
- 2pm–5pm152 flights60.7%
- 5pm–8pm66 flights81.5%
- 8pm–5am282 flights75.3%
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 81.5% on time. The full set of windows spans 21 points.
Explore
Filter SFO to MRY 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 MRY, the best departure window is 5pm–8pm at 81.5% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 60.7%, a wide gap of 20.8 points. All US flights leaving 5pm–8pm ran 68.0%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am74.6%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm60.7%
- 5–8pm81.5%
- 8pm–5am75.3%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 34 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.
August is the worst month at 57.1% on time, 34 points below February, the best at 91.1%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 105 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.7%, a spread of 19 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
National Airspace System accounts for 50% of the 19,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%National Airspace System
- 21%Carrier
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%Extreme weather
50% 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 9,480 minutes out of 19,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 18,891 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.38%, 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
12.5% 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 77 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 58.5% on time across 780 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 780 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 MRY after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 780 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 72.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 773 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to MRY questions
How often is SFO to MRY delayed?
Roughly 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 27.4% of the 780 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 MRY compared with the rest of the country?
72.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 5 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 MRY?
The 5pm–8pm departure window is the strongest at 81.5% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 60.7%, 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 August delays on SFO to MRY?
August is the weakest month at 57.1% on time, compared with 91.1% in February. Across the year that is 34 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
- MRY to SFO — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- SFO to LAX, a related route70.9%
- PHX to MRY, a related route80.2%
- SFO to SEA, a related route72.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record72.6%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. SFO to MRY and MRY 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.