Route reliability record
SMF→ONT
Sacramento to Ontario
- Flights
- 2,108
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 390 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 50 minutes. That rests on 2,108 SMF to ONT flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly SMF to ONT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 87.5%, against 84.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 67 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,099 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.28%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
84.0% on time across 2,108 flights
These figures cover 2,108 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
Which airline is most reliable on SMF to ONT
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 2,108 | 84.0% | 51 min | 0.28% | B+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Sacramento to Ontario
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SMF → LAXSacramento to Los Angeles | SkyWest Airlines | 89.5% | 89.9% | 0.39% | 8pm–5am, Wed | OO 3812 14:08 |
| 2. SMF → LGBSacramento to Long Beach | Southwest Airlines | 85.6% | 85.8% | 0.27% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. SMF → BURSacramento to Burbank | Southwest Airlines | 83.8% | 85.2% | 1.66% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. SMF → ONTSacramento to Ontario | Southwest Airlines | 83.8% | 84.0% | 0.28% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 5. SMF → SNASacramento to Santa Ana | Southwest Airlines | 83.6% | 83.9% | 0.31% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 23 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am336 flights96.1%
- 8am–11am403 flights92.0%
- 11am–2pm426 flights84.3%
- 2pm–5pm348 flights77.5%
- 5pm–8pm364 flights77.1%
- 8pm–5am231 flights72.7%
Scale runs 65% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.1% of the time, against 72.7% for the overnight window. That is 23 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 426 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SMF to ONT 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 ONT, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 96.1% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 72.7%, a wide gap of 23.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am96.1%
- 8–11am92.0%
- 11am–2pm84.3%
- 2–5pm77.5%
- 5–8pm77.1%
- 8pm–5am72.7%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
June is the worst month at 75.0% on time, 14 points below September, the best at 89.3%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 187 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.5% on time and Thursday the weakest at 80.1%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 67% of the 17,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 67%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 4%National Airspace System
67% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 67 to one. The split is drawn from 16,984 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 96.1% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.28%, below the national 1.89% 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% 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 390 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 85.1% on time across 2,119 flights, within about a point 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 2,108 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ONT after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 89.3% on time and June 75.0%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,099 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SMF to ONT questions
How often is SMF to ONT delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.0% of the 2,108 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is SMF to ONT compared with the rest of the country?
84.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SMF to ONT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 96.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 72.7%, 23 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 June delays on SMF to ONT?
June is the weakest month at 75.0% on time, compared with 89.3% in September. Across the year that is 14 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
- ONT to SMF — the return legseparate record
- Sacramento International (SMF) delay statistics
- Ontario International (ONT) delay statistics
- SMF to LAX, a related route85.6%
- PHX to ONT, a related route76.8%
- SMF to SAN, a related route69.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record84.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. SMF to ONT and ONT 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.