Carrier route record
UASMF→LAX
United Airlines · Sacramento to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 202
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 4%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on SMF to LAX 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 14 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 202 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 3,558 at 89.9% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, United's SMF to LAX record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 143 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 202 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
85.6%
Every carrier on SMF to LAX, 5,717 flights
These figures cover 202 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on SMF to LAX
United flew 202 of the 5,717 flights on SMF to LAX, about 4% of it. Its 91.6% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 85.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 92.7% to Frontier at 72.5%. Two 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 89.9% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 77.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,660 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 55 | 92.7% | 31 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines (this page)thin sample | 202 | 91.6% | 72 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 3,558 | 89.9% | 87 min | 0.39% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,660 | 77.1% | 48 min | 0.30% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 242 | 72.5% | 62 min | 2.48% | C |
The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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Departure window
When United runs best on this route
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 202 flights.
- 5am–8am66 flights92.4%
- 8am–11am24 flights—
- 11am–2pm28 flights—
- 2pm–5pm84 flights91.7%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5am–8am window is the strongest at 92.4% on time. The full set of windows spans half a point.
Across the year
United on SMF to LAX through the year
- Oct–Dec 202518 flights—
- Jan–Mar 2026104 flights88.5%
- Apr–Jun 202679 flights93.7%
- Jul–Sep 20261 flights—
Scale runs 80% to 100%. 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 91.6% on time across 202 flights.
Split by quarter, United on SMF to LAX logged 18 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 104 flights in Jan–Mar 2026, 79 flights in Apr–Jun 2026 and 1 flights in Jul–Sep 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 91.6% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 93.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 78.4%, a spread of 16 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on SMF to LAX runs when it is late
The 17 late arrivals split 6 under half an hour, 6 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 5 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early41 flights20.3%
- Within 15 min144 flights71.3%
- 15–29 min late6 flights3.0%
- 30–59 min late6 flights3.0%
- 1–2 hours late3 flights1.5%
- 2+ hours late2 flights1.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 202 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 22 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 11 still arrived on time. 6 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on SMF to LAX
The latest arrival of the period was on 20 January 2026, 5 hours 52 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in March 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 20 January 2026 | 5 hours 52 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 March 2026 | 2 hours 9 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 January 2026 | 1 hour 59 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 2 March 2026 | 1 hour 49 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 11 March 2026 | 1 hour 19 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 63% of the 1,229 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 63%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
63% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 1,229 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 63 to one. The split is drawn from 1,229 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 92.4% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.5% 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 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.6% on time across 202 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 202 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 United on SMF to LAX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 202 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 91.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 202 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SMF to LAX, every carrier
- United on LAX to SMF, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on SMF to LAX89.9%
- Southwest Airlines on SMF to LAX77.1%
- Frontier Airlines on SMF to LAX72.5%
- United 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
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.