Route reliability record
SNA→SMF
Santa Ana to Sacramento
- Flights
- 2,289
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 404 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route 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 9 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 50 minutes. That rests on 2,289 SNA to SMF flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly SNA to SMF: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 97.6% of the time and Saturday flights 91.1%, against 86.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 89 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,265 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.96%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
86.2% on time across 2,289 flights
These figures cover 2,289 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SNA to SMF
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 | 2,289 | 86.2% | 50 min | 0.96% | A+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Santa Ana to Sacramento
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. LAX → SMFLos Angeles to Sacramento | SkyWest Airlines | 87.4% | 87.7% | 0.37% | 8am–11am, Wed | OO 3755 09:10 |
| 2. LGB → SMFLong Beach to Sacramento | Southwest Airlines | 86.4% | 86.8% | 0.43% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. SNA → SMFSanta Ana to Sacramento | Southwest Airlines | 85.4% | 86.2% | 0.96% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 4. BUR → SMFBurbank to Sacramento | Southwest Airlines | 85.2% | 86.5% | 1.50% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 5. ONT → SMFOntario to Sacramento | Southwest Airlines | 84.9% | 85.1% | 0.28% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 21 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am289 flights97.6%
- 8am–11am435 flights93.8%
- 11am–2pm405 flights91.0%
- 2pm–5pm399 flights80.8%
- 5pm–8pm502 flights77.0%
- 8pm–5am259 flights79.1%
Scale runs 70% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 97.6% of the time, against 77.0% for the evening window. That is 21 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 502 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SNA to SMF 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 SMF, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 97.6% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 77.0%, a wide gap of 20.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am97.6%
- 8–11am93.8%
- 11am–2pm91.0%
- 2–5pm80.8%
- 5–8pm77.0%
- 8pm–5am79.1%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 2,289 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 81.0%. February is the strongest month at 91.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 10 points. July was the busiest month here, with 216 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 91.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.0%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 71% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 71%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
71% 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 71 to one. The split is drawn from 15,613 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 97.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.96% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.5% 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 83.9% on time across 2,288 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 2,289 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 SMF after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: avoid the 5pm–8pm departure. It runs 77.0% on time against 97.6% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 21 points is the largest single thing you control here. Southwest Airlines is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 2,265 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SNA to SMF questions
How often is SNA to SMF delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 13.8% of the 2,289 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is SNA to SMF compared with the rest of the country?
86.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 9 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SNA to SMF?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 97.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 77.0%, 21 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 April delays on SNA to SMF?
April is the weakest month at 81.0% on time, compared with 91.0% in February. Across the year that is 10 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
- SMF to SNA — the return legseparate record
- John Wayne Airport (SNA) delay statistics
- Sacramento International (SMF) delay statistics
- SNA to SFO, a related route65.5%
- LAX to SMF, a related route84.8%
- SNA to PHX, a related route82.3%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record86.2%
- 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. SNA to SMF and SMF 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.