Route reliability record
SFO→SMF
San Francisco to Sacramento
- Flights
- 1,359
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 86 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 1,359 SFO to SMF flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly SFO to SMF: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 82.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 84.3%, against 76.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
76.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,336 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.62%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
77.0% on time across 1,243 flights
These figures cover 1,359 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 4 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SFO to SMF
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 | 1,243 | 77.0% | 79 min | 1.77% | B |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 116 | 66.4% | 49 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on SFO to SMF
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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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 11 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am362 flights82.2%
- 11am–2pm187 flights71.0%
- 2pm–5pm99 flights72.4%
- 5pm–8pm355 flights77.4%
- 8pm–5am356 flights72.3%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 71.0% on time against 82.2% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 362 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SFO to SMF 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 SMF, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 82.2% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 71.0%, a wide gap of 11.2 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am82.2%
- 11am–2pm71.0%
- 2–5pm72.4%
- 5–8pm77.4%
- 8pm–5am72.3%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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.
July is the worst month at 63.0% on time, 22 points below March, the best at 85.0%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 144 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 69.4%, a spread of 15 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 24,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 15%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 24,007 reported delay minutes.
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 to one.
Cancellations sit at 1.62% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.07%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 86 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 62.2% on time across 1,360 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,359 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 SMF 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. March runs 85.0% on time and July 63.0%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,336 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to SMF questions
How often is SFO to SMF 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 24.0% of the 1,359 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is SFO to SMF compared with the rest of the country?
76.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of about a point against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SFO to SMF?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 82.2% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 71.0%, 11 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 July delays on SFO to SMF?
July is the weakest month at 63.0% on time, compared with 85.0% in March. Across the year that is 22 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
- SMF to SFO — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Sacramento International (SMF) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on SFO to SMF77.0%
- United Airlines on SFO to SMF66.4%
- SFO to LAX, a related route70.9%
- LAX to SMF, a related route84.8%
- SFO to SEA, a related route72.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record77.0%
- United Airlines on-time record66.4%
- 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 SMF and SMF 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.