Route reliability record
SMF→PDX
Sacramento to Portland
- Flights
- 1,977
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 479 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,977 SMF to PDX flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 444 at 84.7% on time.
Best time to fly SMF to PDX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 89.1%, against 82.3% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 47 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,967 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.40%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
84.7% on time across 444 flights
These figures cover 1,977 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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
Which airline is most reliable on SMF to PDX
The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 328 | 90.1% | 77 min | 1.22% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines | 444 | 84.7% | 59 min | 0.68% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,205 | 79.2% | 50 min | 0.08% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 84.7%, 6 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Sacramento to Portland
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SMF → PDXSacramento to Portland | SkyWest Airlines | 84.1% | 84.7% | 0.68% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. SMF → PDXSacramento to Portland | Southwest Airlines | 79.1% | 79.2% | 0.08% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 24 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am372 flights95.7%
- 8am–11am66 flights83.3%
- 11am–2pm510 flights86.0%
- 2pm–5pm300 flights84.2%
- 5pm–8pm415 flights71.7%
- 8pm–5am314 flights72.3%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.7% of the time, against 71.7% for the evening window. That is 24 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 510 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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.
December is the weak month at 70.1% on time, against 88.9% in February. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. July was the busiest month here, with 215 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 89.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 78.0%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 66% of the 19,000 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.
- 66%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 5%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
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 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 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 18,813 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 95.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.40%, 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 actually costs
5.0% 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 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 479 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 82.4% on time across 1,989 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,977 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 PDX 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. February runs 88.9% on time and December 70.1%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,967 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SMF to PDX questions
How often is SMF to PDX 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 17.7% of the 1,977 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SMF to PDX?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 84.7% on time across 444 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 79.2%, a gap of 6 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SMF to PDX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 71.7%, 24 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 December delays on SMF to PDX?
December is the weakest month at 70.1% on time, compared with 88.9% in February. Across the year that is 19 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
- PDX to SMF — the return legseparate record
- Sacramento International (SMF) delay statistics
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- Alaska Airlines on SMF to PDX90.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on SMF to PDX84.7%
- Southwest Airlines on SMF to PDX79.2%
- SMF to LAX, a related route86.0%
- SEA to PDX, a related route83.1%
- SMF to SAN, a related route73.3%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record90.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record84.7%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record79.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. SMF to PDX and PDX 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.