Carrier route record

OOSMF→PDX

SkyWest Airlines · Sacramento to Portland

Flights: 444
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 22%
Carriers: 3

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

SkyWest on SMF to PDX 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 444 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's SMF to PDX record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 71 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 439 completed flights

Avg delay

59 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.68%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.3%

Every carrier on SMF to PDX, 1,977 flights

These figures cover 444 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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

SkyWest against every carrier on SMF to PDX

SkyWest flew 444 of the 1,977 flights on SMF to PDX, about 22% of it. Its 84.7% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 90.1% to Southwest at 79.2%. One 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.

On-time performance by carrier on SMF to PDX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Alaska Airlinesthin sample	328	90.1%	77 min	1.22%	A
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	444	84.7%	59 min	0.68%	B+
Southwest Airlines	1,205	79.2%	50 min	0.08%	B+

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 19 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–8am50 flights93.9%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm207 flights90.2%
2pm–5pm28 flights—
5pm–8pm159 flights75.2%
8pm–5am—

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 93.9% of the time, against 75.2% for the evening window. That is 19 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 207 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on SMF to PDX through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.October best, December worst

December is the weak month at 71.1% on time, against 90.9% in October. 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 92 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 80.3%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 3,928 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
59%
Carrier
28%
National Airspace System
7%
Extreme weather
6%

59% 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 3,928 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 3,928 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 93.9% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.68%, 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

5.7% 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 about an hour, 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 84.6% on time across 456 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. 444 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 SkyWest on SMF to PDX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 444 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 84.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 439 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