Route reliability record
SNA→STS
Santa Ana to Santa Rosa
- Flights
- 746
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 433 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 746 SNA to STS flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly SNA to STS: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 79.6% of the time and Saturday flights 82.0%, against 78.8% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 737 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.67%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
78.8% on time across 746 flights
These figures cover 746 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SNA to STS
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 746 | 78.8% | 68 min | 0.67% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on SNA to STS
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.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 746 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm375 flights79.6%
- 2pm–5pm133 flights77.9%
- 5pm–8pm238 flights78.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 11am–2pm window is the strongest at 79.6% on time. The full set of windows spans 2 points.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 36 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.
July is the worst month at 53.2% on time, 36 points below January, the best at 89.5%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. December was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 82.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 70.0%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 11,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
48% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 10,585 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.67%, 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 actually costs
8.4% 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 433 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 78.5% on time across 746 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. 746 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in STS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 746 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 78.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 737 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SNA to STS questions
How often is SNA to STS delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.2% of the 746 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is SNA to STS compared with the rest of the country?
78.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SNA to STS?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 79.6% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 77.9%, 2 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 July delays on SNA to STS?
July is the weakest month at 53.2% on time, compared with 89.5% in January. Across the year that is 36 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
- STS to SNA — the return legseparate record
- John Wayne Airport (SNA) delay statistics
- SNA to SFO, a related route70.3%
- SAN to STS, a related route78.8%
- SNA to PHX, a related route82.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record78.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. SNA to STS and STS 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.