Carrier route record
OOSFO→SNA
SkyWest Airlines · San Francisco to Santa Ana
- Flights
- 3,521
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 75%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on SFO to SNA lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 3,521 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on SFO to SNA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,464 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.42%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.3%
Every carrier on SFO to SNA, 4,726 flights
These figures cover 3,521 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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.
Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on SFO to SNA
SkyWest flew 3,521 of the 4,726 flights on SFO to SNA, most of the route. Its 79.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 87.8% to Frontier at 73.6%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 49 | 87.8% | 71 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 1,011 | 83.9% | 51 min | 0.49% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 3,521 | 79.4% | 60 min | 1.42% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 145 | 73.6% | 85 min | 0.69% | C+ |
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on SFO to SNA
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 19 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–8am523 flights92.6%
- 8am–11am771 flights77.9%
- 11am–2pm767 flights78.0%
- 2pm–5pm817 flights73.6%
- 5pm–8pm402 flights77.9%
- 8pm–5am241 flights82.3%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.6% of the time, against 73.6% for the afternoon window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 817 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on SFO to SNA through the year
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 62.3%. January is the strongest month at 89.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 27 points. October was the busiest month here, with 350 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 86.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 75.2%. 11 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 43,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%National Airspace System
- 19%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
39% 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 43,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 42,873 reported delay minutes.
36% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 15,000 minutes out of 43,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.42% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.20%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.5% 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 372 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.2% on time across 3,564 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,521 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 SNA
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 89.5% on time and May 62.3%, a swing of 27 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 3,464 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to SNA, every carrier
- SkyWest on SNA to SFO, the return leg
- United Airlines on SFO to SNA83.9%
- Frontier Airlines on SFO to SNA73.6%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- John Wayne Airport (SNA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- 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.