Carrier route record
WNSMF→LAX
Southwest Airlines · Sacramento to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 1,616
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 29%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on SMF to LAX lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,616 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on SMF to LAX from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,612 completed flights
Avg delay
48 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.19%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
86.0%
Every carrier on SMF to LAX, 5,637 flights
These figures cover 1,616 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on SMF to LAX
Southwest flew 1,616 of the 5,637 flights on SMF to LAX, about 29% of it. Its 77.3% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 86.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 95.9% to Frontier at 73.9%. Three 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 99 | 95.9% | 24 min | 1.01% | A |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 201 | 91.5% | 72 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 3,517 | 90.1% | 86 min | 0.45% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 1,616 | 77.3% | 48 min | 0.19% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 204 | 73.9% | 60 min | 2.45% | C |
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 32 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–8am330 flights93.3%
- 8am–11am305 flights88.5%
- 11am–2pm157 flights84.7%
- 2pm–5pm230 flights71.3%
- 5pm–8pm366 flights61.3%
- 8pm–5am228 flights65.8%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.3% on time, against 93.3% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 366 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on SMF to LAX through the year
June is the worst month at 69.7% on time, 16 points below January, the best at 85.4%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 152 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.2%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 68% of the 18,000 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.
- 68%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
68% 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 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 68 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 17,553 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 93.3% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.19%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.1% 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 roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 373 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 runs 79.0% on time across 1,614 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,616 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 Southwest on SMF to LAX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 85.4% on time and June 69.7%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,612 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SMF to LAX, every carrier
- Southwest on LAX to SMF, the return leg
- United Airlines on SMF to LAX91.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on SMF to LAX90.1%
- Frontier Airlines on SMF to LAX73.9%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Sacramento International (SMF) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) 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.