Route reliability record
SMF→SNA
Sacramento to Santa Ana
- Flights
- 2,288
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 404 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average. That rests on 2,288 SMF to SNA flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly SMF to SNA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.5% of the time and Wednesday flights 90.8%, against 83.9% 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 66 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,280 completed flights
Avg delay
44 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.31%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
83.9% on time across 2,288 flights
These figures cover 2,288 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 SNA
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 | 2,288 | 83.9% | 44 min | 0.31% | B+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Sacramento to Santa Ana
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 17 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am310 flights94.5%
- 8am–11am432 flights92.8%
- 11am–2pm409 flights78.0%
- 2pm–5pm478 flights78.9%
- 5pm–8pm460 flights79.0%
- 8pm–5am199 flights82.9%
Scale runs 70% to 100%.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 78.0% on time against 94.5% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 478 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SMF to SNA 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 SNA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 94.5% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 78.0%, a wide gap of 16.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am94.5%
- 8–11am92.8%
- 11am–2pm78.0%
- 2–5pm78.9%
- 5–8pm79.0%
- 8pm–5am82.9%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 12 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.
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 78.4%. January is the strongest month at 90.8%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 12 points. July was the busiest month here, with 215 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.8% on time and Saturday the weakest at 79.5%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 67% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 67%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
67% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 67 to one. The split is drawn from 16,092 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 94.5% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.31%, 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 3.2% 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 404 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 86.2% on time across 2,289 flights, within 2 points 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 2,288 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 SNA 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. January runs 90.8% on time and October 78.4%, a swing of 12 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of October before you think about anything else. 2,280 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SMF to SNA questions
How often is SMF to SNA 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 16.1% of the 2,288 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average.
How reliable is SMF to SNA compared with the rest of the country?
83.9% 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 SNA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.5% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 78.0%, 17 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 October delays on SMF to SNA?
October is the weakest month at 78.4% on time, compared with 90.8% in January. Across the year that is 12 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
- SNA to SMF — the return legseparate record
- Sacramento International (SMF) delay statistics
- John Wayne Airport (SNA) delay statistics
- SMF to LAX, a related route85.6%
- SFO to SNA, a related route77.4%
- SMF to SAN, a related route69.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record83.9%
- 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 SNA and SNA 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.