Carrier route record
OOSFO→SMF
SkyWest Airlines · San Francisco to Sacramento
- Flights
- 1,243
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 91%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on SFO to SMF lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly 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 1,243 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on SFO to SMF from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,220 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.77%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
76.0%
Every carrier on SFO to SMF, 1,359 flights
These figures cover 1,243 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
SkyWest against every carrier on SFO to SMF
SkyWest flew 1,243 of the 1,359 flights on SFO to SMF, most of the route. Its 77.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 76.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 77.0% to United at 66.4%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 (this page) | 1,243 | 77.0% | 79 min | 1.77% | B |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 116 | 66.4% | 49 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on SFO to SMF
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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 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–8pm338 flights76.5%
- 8pm–5am257 flights76.5%
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.
Across the year
SkyWest on SFO to SMF through the year
August is the worst month at 64.0% on time, 21 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 84.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 69.7%, a spread of 15 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on SFO to SMF runs when it is late
The 281 late arrivals split 103 under half an hour, 89 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 89 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early245 flights20.1%
- Within 15 min694 flights56.9%
- 15–29 min late103 flights8.4%
- 30–59 min late89 flights7.3%
- 1–2 hours late48 flights3.9%
- 2+ hours late41 flights3.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,220 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
45 of 273 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 16% of them. 53 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for SkyWest on SFO to SMF
The latest arrival of the period was on 4 January 2026, 15 hours 48 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The five worst days are spread across January, December and August, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 4 January 2026 | 15 hours 48 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 December 2025 | 15 hours 8 minutes | Carrier |
| 24 August 2026 | 14 hours 25 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 13 December 2025 | 13 hours 47 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 19 January 2026 | 13 hours 24 minutes | Extreme weather |
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 22,000 reported delay minutes.
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 16%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 22,096 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 82.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.77% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.08%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here 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 59.3% on time across 1,245 flights, 18 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 18 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,243 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.
What to do with this
Booking SkyWest on SFO to SMF
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. March runs 85.0% on time and August 64.0%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,220 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to SMF, every carrier
- SkyWest on SMF to SFO, the return leg
- United Airlines on SFO to SMF66.4%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Sacramento International (SMF) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.