Route reliability record
SMF→ATL
Sacramento to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,007
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 2,092 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 16 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,007 SMF to ATL flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Best time to fly SMF to ATL: a 8pm–5am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 98.6%, against 92.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 16 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 156 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
92.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 989 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.39%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
92.9% on time across 1,007 flights
These figures cover 1,007 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 SMF to ATL
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,007 | 92.9% | 93 min | 1.39% | A |
Flight by flight
Flights on SMF to ATL
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 is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 1,007 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights92.3%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm364 flights92.1%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am278 flights94.9%
Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The overnight block holds up unusually well at 94.9% on time across 278 flights. Red-eyes fly into empty airspace and empty gates, and they are the first rotation of the aircraft's day rather than the last. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SMF to ATL 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 SMF to ATL, the best departure window is 8pm–5am at 94.9% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 92.1%, a narrow gap of 2.8 points. All US flights leaving 8pm–5am ran 70.1%.
- 5–8am92.3%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm92.1%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am94.9%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,007 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
July is the worst month at 87.5% on time, 11 points below September, the best at 98.7%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 89 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 98.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 88.7%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 64% of the 6,511 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 64%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 11%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 64%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,135 of the 6,511 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 6,511 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.39% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.40%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 2,092 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.3% on time across 1,007 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. 1,007 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ATL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,007 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 92.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 989 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SMF to ATL questions
How often is SMF to ATL delayed?
About one flight in fifteen arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 7.1% of the 1,007 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is SMF to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
92.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 16 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SMF to ATL?
The 8pm–5am departure window is the strongest at 94.9% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 92.1%, 3 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 SMF to ATL?
July is the weakest month at 87.5% on time, compared with 98.7% in September. Across the year that is 11 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
- ATL to SMF — the return legseparate record
- Sacramento International (SMF) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- SMF to LAX, a related route85.6%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- SMF to SAN, a related route69.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record92.9%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. SMF to ATL and ATL to SMF 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.