Route reliability record
SFO→RDM
San Francisco to Redmond
- Flights
- 1,278
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 462 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly 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 1,278 SFO to RDM flights, of which United Airlines flew 621 at 84.3% on time.
Best time to fly SFO to RDM: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.3% of the time and Saturday flights 85.0%, against 77.7% 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
77.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,263 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.02%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
84.3% on time across 621 flights
These figures cover 1,278 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 RDM
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 84.3% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 71.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 657 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 621 | 84.3% | 62 min | 0.64% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 657 | 71.4% | 60 min | 1.37% | C |
The spread between United and SkyWest is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Flights on SFO to RDM
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly San Francisco to Redmond
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SFO → RDMSan Francisco to Redmond | United Airlines | 83.8% | 84.3% | 0.64% | 8am–11am, Tue | UA 2153 10:35 |
| 2. SFO → RDMSan Francisco to Redmond | SkyWest Airlines | 70.4% | 71.4% | 1.37% | 2pm–5pm, Sat | OO 5425 16:30 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 39 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am363 flights90.3%
- 11am–2pm175 flights74.1%
- 2pm–5pm287 flights76.1%
- 5pm–8pm83 flights51.2%
- 8pm–5am370 flights74.0%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.2% on time, against 90.3% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 370 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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 58.1% on time, 28 points below October, the best at 86.2%. 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 125 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 85.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.9%. 14 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 17,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 29%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 16,998 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 90.3% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.02% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.16%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.9% 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.
At 462 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 66.7% on time across 1,278 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,278 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 RDM 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. October runs 86.2% on time and June 58.1%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,263 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to RDM questions
How often is SFO to RDM 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 22.3% of the 1,278 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SFO to RDM?
United Airlines leads at 84.3% on time across 621 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 71.4%, a gap of 13 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SFO to RDM?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 51.2%, 39 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 RDM?
June is the weakest month at 58.1% on time, compared with 86.2% in October. Across the year that is 28 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
- RDM to SFO — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- United Airlines on SFO to RDM84.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on SFO to RDM71.4%
- SFO to LAX, a related route73.9%
- SEA to RDM, a related route83.9%
- SFO to SEA, a related route73.7%
- United Airlines on-time record84.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record71.4%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. SFO to RDM and RDM 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.