Route reliability record
SFO→RNO
San Francisco to Reno
- Flights
- 1,897
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 192 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,897 SFO to RNO flights, of which United Airlines flew 905 at 76.5% on time.
Best time to fly SFO to RNO: a 5pm–8pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 85.1%, against 75.5% 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
75.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,873 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.11%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
76.5% on time across 905 flights
These figures cover 1,897 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% 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 RNO
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 905 | 76.5% | 56 min | 0.44% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 992 | 74.6% | 75 min | 1.71% | C |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 76.5%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on SFO to RNO
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 Reno
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 → RNOSan Francisco to Reno | United Airlines | 76.2% | 76.5% | 0.44% | 5pm–8pm, Tue | UA 1757 22:45 |
| 2. SFO → RNOSan Francisco to Reno | SkyWest Airlines | 73.3% | 74.6% | 1.71% | 5pm–8pm, Tue | OO 5394 08:25 |
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 19 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am4 flights—
- 8am–11am394 flights82.5%
- 11am–2pm412 flights72.9%
- 2pm–5pm372 flights72.0%
- 5pm–8pm325 flights85.1%
- 8pm–5am390 flights66.2%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 85.1% on time. The full set of windows spans 19 points.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 38 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 54.8% on time, 38 points below September, the best at 92.4%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 191 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 69.0%. 16 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 30,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
38% 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 30,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 30,477 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 11,000 of the 30,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.11% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.16%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.2% 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 192 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 64.7% on time across 1,897 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 1,897 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 RNO 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. September runs 92.4% on time and June 54.8%, a swing of 38 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,873 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to RNO questions
How often is SFO to RNO 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 24.5% of the 1,897 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 RNO?
United Airlines leads at 76.5% on time across 905 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 74.6%, a gap of 2 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 RNO?
The 5pm–8pm departure window is the strongest at 85.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 66.2%, 19 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 RNO?
June is the weakest month at 54.8% on time, compared with 92.4% in September. Across the year that is 38 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
- RNO to SFO — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- United Airlines on SFO to RNO76.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on SFO to RNO74.6%
- SFO to LAX, a related route73.9%
- LAS to RNO, a related route79.7%
- SFO to SEA, a related route73.7%
- United Airlines on-time record76.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record74.6%
- 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 RNO and RNO 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.