Carrier route record
ASSMF→SAN
Alaska Airlines · Sacramento to San Diego
- Flights
- 185
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 4%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on SMF to SAN earns an A−. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 40 minutes. That rests on 185 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 1,187 at 79.0% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's SMF to SAN record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 79 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 179 completed flights
Avg delay
38 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.24%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.3%
Every carrier on SMF to SAN, 5,182 flights
These figures cover 185 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
Alaska against every carrier on SMF to SAN
Alaska flew 185 of the 5,182 flights on SMF to SAN, about 4% of it. Its 85.5% on time is 12 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 85.5% to Southwest at 70.9%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 79.0% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 70.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 3,810 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlines (this page)thin sample | 185 | 85.5% | 38 min | 3.24% | A− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,187 | 79.0% | 54 min | 1.77% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 3,810 | 70.9% | 48 min | 0.55% | C+ |
SkyWest leads Southwest by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Departure window
When Alaska 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 185 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Alaska's SMF to SAN record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 85.5% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Alaska on SMF to SAN through the year
- Oct–Dec 202566 flights82.3%
- Jan–Mar 202656 flights85.7%
- Apr–Jun 202663 flights88.5%
Scale runs 75% to 95%. 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 85.5% on time across 185 flights.
Quarter by quarter Alaska on SMF to SAN held fairly steady: 82.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 85.7% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 88.5% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
Delay causes
Why Alaska runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 74% of the 993 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.
- 74%National Airspace System
- 26%Carrier
74% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 730 minutes out of 993, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 993 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.24%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 480 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 77.2% on time across 185 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. 185 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 Alaska on SMF to SAN
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.24% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you roughly 40 minutes; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 179 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SMF to SAN, every carrier
- Alaska on SAN to SMF, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on SMF to SAN79.0%
- Southwest Airlines on SMF to SAN70.9%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- Sacramento International (SMF) delay statistics
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.