Route reliability record
SNA→SFO
Santa Ana to San Francisco
- Flights
- 4,771
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 372 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 4,771 SNA to SFO flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 3,567 at 66.4% on time.
Best time to fly SNA to SFO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.4% of the time and Saturday flights 75.2%, against 65.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 118 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,639 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.70%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
66.4% on time across 3,567 flights
These figures cover 4,771 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SNA to SFO
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 3,567 | 66.4% | 66 min | 1.88% | C |
| United Airlines | 1,012 | 63.5% | 62 min | 1.09% | D |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 38 | 59.5% | 74 min | 2.63% | D |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 154 | 59.2% | 91 min | 1.30% | D |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 66.4%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on SNA to SFO
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Santa Ana to San Francisco
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. 5 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LAX → SJCLos Angeles to San Jose | SkyWest Airlines | 90.3% | 90.7% | 0.39% | 8am–11am, Tue | OO 3883 18:00 |
| 2. LGB → OAKLong Beach to Oakland | Southwest Airlines | 88.1% | 88.5% | 0.45% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. ONT → SJCOntario to San Jose | Southwest Airlines | 85.8% | 85.9% | 0.08% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. LGB → SJCLong Beach to San Jose | Southwest Airlines | 85.8% | 86.0% | 0.24% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 5. ONT → OAKOntario to Oakland | Southwest Airlines | 85.5% | 86.0% | 0.55% | 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 30 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am651 flights84.4%
- 8am–11am795 flights58.5%
- 11am–2pm690 flights68.1%
- 2pm–5pm1,098 flights66.8%
- 5pm–8pm1,206 flights60.4%
- 8pm–5am331 flights54.8%
Scale runs 45% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 54.8% on time, against 84.4% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 1,206 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SNA to SFO 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 SNA to SFO, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 84.4% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 54.8%, a wide gap of 29.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am84.4%
- 8–11am58.5%
- 11am–2pm68.1%
- 2–5pm66.8%
- 5–8pm60.4%
- 8pm–5am54.8%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 50 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 May, when the on-time rate falls to 39.4%. March is the strongest month at 89.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 50 points. October was the busiest month here, with 448 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 75.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.1%, a spread of 17 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
National Airspace System accounts for 56% of the 106,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 56%National Airspace System
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
56% 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 59,000 minutes out of 106,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 105,753 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.70% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.07%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
12.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 372 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 77.4% on time across 4,701 flights, 12 points above 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 12 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 4,771 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 SFO 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. March runs 89.5% on time and May 39.4%, a swing of 50 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 4,639 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SNA to SFO questions
How often is SNA to SFO delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 34.5% of the 4,771 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SNA to SFO?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 66.4% on time across 3,567 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 63.5%, a gap of 3 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 SNA to SFO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 84.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 54.8%, 30 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 May delays on SNA to SFO?
May is the weakest month at 39.4% on time, compared with 89.5% in March. Across the year that is 50 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
- SFO to SNA — the return legseparate record
- John Wayne Airport (SNA) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on SNA to SFO66.4%
- United Airlines on SNA to SFO63.5%
- Frontier Airlines on SNA to SFO59.2%
- SNA to PHX, a related route82.3%
- LAX to SFO, a related route60.1%
- SNA to LAS, a related route82.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record66.4%
- United Airlines on-time record63.5%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record59.5%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. SNA to SFO and SFO to SNA 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.