Carrier route record
OOSFO→RNO
SkyWest Airlines · San Francisco to Reno
- Flights
- 992
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 52%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on SFO to RNO sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 992 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on SFO to RNO from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 972 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.71%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.5%
Every carrier on SFO to RNO, 1,897 flights
These figures cover 992 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% 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
SkyWest against every carrier on SFO to RNO
SkyWest flew 992 of the 1,897 flights on SFO to RNO, most of the route. Its 74.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 75.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 76.5% to SkyWest at 74.6%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 905 | 76.5% | 56 min | 0.44% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 992 | 74.6% | 75 min | 1.71% | C |
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on SFO to RNO
Departure window
When SkyWest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 23 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–11am313 flights84.5%
- 11am–2pm208 flights65.0%
- 2pm–5pm295 flights72.1%
- 5pm–8pm72 flights85.7%
- 8pm–5am104 flights63.1%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.1% on time, against 85.7% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 313 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on SFO to RNO through the year
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 65.6%. August is the strongest month at 97.3%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 32 points. December was the busiest month here, with 123 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 65.5%. 19 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
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 19,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Carrier
- 28%National Airspace System
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, 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 7,203 of the 19,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 18,623 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.71% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.30%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.3% 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 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 63.9% on time across 992 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 992 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.
What to do with this
Booking SkyWest on SFO to RNO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 992 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 74.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 972 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to RNO, every carrier
- SkyWest on RNO to SFO, the return leg
- United Airlines on SFO to RNO76.5%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.