Route reliability record
SFO→RDD
San Francisco to Redding
- Flights
- 887
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 199 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 77.6%. The late ones land about 2.3 hours behind schedule. That rests on 887 SFO to RDD flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly SFO to RDD: a 5pm–8pm departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 82.0% of the time and Saturday flights 77.8%, against 73.8% 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
73.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 866 completed flights
Avg delay
140 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.92%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
73.8% on time across 887 flights
These figures cover 887 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.7% 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 RDD
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 | 887 | 73.8% | 140 min | 1.92% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on SFO to RDD
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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 12 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–11am175 flights73.1%
- 11am–2pm162 flights76.4%
- 2pm–5pm179 flights69.7%
- 5pm–8pm101 flights82.0%
- 8pm–5am270 flights72.1%
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 82.0% on time. The full set of windows spans 12 points.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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.
December is the weak month at 58.8% on time, against 86.2% in March. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 77.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 70.1%. 8 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 32,000 reported delay minutes.
- 33%Carrier
- 30%Extreme weather
- 22%National Airspace System
- 15%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 30% 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 4.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 31,679 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.92% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.45%.
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. 12.7% 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 199 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 runs 72.9% on time across 888 flights, within about a point 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. 887 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 RDD after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 887 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 73.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 866 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to RDD questions
How often is SFO to RDD 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 26.2% of the 887 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 2.3 hours on average.
How reliable is SFO to RDD compared with the rest of the country?
73.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, 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 RDD?
The 5pm–8pm departure window is the strongest at 82.0% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 69.7%, 12 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 December delays on SFO to RDD?
December is the weakest month at 58.8% on time, compared with 86.2% in March. Across the year that is 27 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
- RDD 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 record73.8%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. SFO to RDD and RDD 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.