Route reliability record
SFO→RNO
San Francisco to Reno
- Flights
- 1,979
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 192 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,979 SFO to RNO flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,035 at 72.5% 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 81.9%, against 72.0% 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 53 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,953 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.06%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
72.5% on time across 1,035 flights
These figures cover 1,979 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% 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 RNO
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,035 | 72.5% | 79 min | 1.64% | C |
| United Airlines | 944 | 71.6% | 56 min | 0.42% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 72.5%, about a point 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.
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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 | SkyWest Airlines | 71.3% | 72.5% | 1.64% | 8am–11am, Tue | OO 5394 08:13 |
| 2. SFO → RNOSan Francisco to Reno | United Airlines | 71.3% | 71.6% | 0.42% | 5pm–8pm, Tue | UA 1757 22:45 |
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 23 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am4 flights—
- 8am–11am394 flights84.3%
- 11am–2pm474 flights68.5%
- 2pm–5pm392 flights64.3%
- 5pm–8pm292 flights85.1%
- 8pm–5am423 flights62.4%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 62.4% on time, against 85.1% for the 5pm–8pm 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 474 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SFO to RNO 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 RNO, the best departure window is 5pm–8pm at 85.1% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 62.4%, a wide gap of 22.7 points. All US flights leaving 5pm–8pm ran 68.0%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am84.3%
- 11am–2pm68.5%
- 2–5pm64.3%
- 5–8pm85.1%
- 8pm–5am62.4%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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 81.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 65.1%, a spread of 17 points.
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 37,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 37,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 36,874 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.06% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.25%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.5% 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 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 59.3% on time across 1,980 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,979 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. 1,953 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to RNO questions
How often is SFO to RNO 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 28.0% of the 1,979 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SFO to RNO?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 72.5% on time across 1,035 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 71.6%, a gap of about a point. 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 62.4%, 23 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
- SkyWest Airlines on SFO to RNO72.5%
- United Airlines on SFO to RNO71.6%
- SFO to LAX, a related route70.9%
- LAS to RNO, a related route78.9%
- SFO to SEA, a related route72.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record72.5%
- United Airlines on-time record71.6%
- 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 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.