Carrier route record

F9SMF→LAS

Frontier Airlines · Sacramento to Las Vegas

Flights: 211
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 5%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.

Frontier on SMF to LAS lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. 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 is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 211 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 405 at 90.7% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on SMF to LAS from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

76.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 208 completed flights

Avg delay

77 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.42%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.1%

Every carrier on SMF to LAS, 4,238 flights

These figures cover 211 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% 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

Frontier against every carrier on SMF to LAS

Frontier flew 211 of the 4,238 flights on SMF to LAS, about 5% of it. Its 76.4% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 90.7% to Frontier at 76.4%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 90.7% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 78.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 3,432 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on SMF to LAS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	405	90.7%	90 min	1.48%	A
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	190	86.0%	69 min	2.11%	A
Southwest Airlines	3,432	78.7%	54 min	0.35%	B+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	211	76.4%	77 min	1.42%	B

The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 12 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 12 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

Departure window

When Frontier runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 22 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am41 flights90.0%
11am–2pm11 flights—
2pm–5pm69 flights78.3%
5pm–8pm89 flights67.8%
8pm–5am1 flights—

Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.0% of the time, against 67.8% for the evening window. That is 22 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 89 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on SMF to LAS through the year

Jul–Sep 202543 flights66.7%
Oct–Dec 202538 flights76.3%
Jan–Mar 202651 flights86.0%
Apr–Jun 202679 flights75.6%

Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 76.4% on time across 211 flights.

Frontier on SMF to LAS did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 86.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 66.7%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 53 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 80.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 65.9%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 66% of the 3,765 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Late-arriving aircraft
66%
National Airspace System
28%
Carrier
6%
Extreme weather
0%

66% 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 3,765 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 66 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 3,765 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 90.0% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.42% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

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. 12.0% 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 397 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 runs 76.4% on time across 211 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 211 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 Frontier on SMF to LAS

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 211 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 76.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 208 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures