OnTimeStats

Historical on-time performance

Houston to Sacramento

1,609 miData through Dec 2025Source: US DOT · BTS

Flights on IAH–SMF arrive on time 77% of the time over the last 12 months.

On-time rate77%arrived within 15 min
p90 delay45 min1 in 10 flights is worse (tail risk)
Cancelled0.3%of scheduled flights

based on 667 flights over the last 12 months. On-time means arriving within 15 minutes (BTS standard).

By airline

How each carrier compares

  • United Airlines
    On-time77%
    Medianon time
    p9045 min
    Cancel0.3%
    Flights667

Why flights run late

Delay causes

  • Airline44%
  • Weather3%
  • Air traffic (NAS)13%
  • Late aircraft40%
  • Security0%

Most delay minutes here are attributed to Airline.

Over time

On-time trend

By season

On-time rate by month

When to fly

Best time to fly IAH → SMF

All airlines · rolling 36 months (2023-01 .. 2025-12).

Best time of day

On-time rates are fairly even by time of day on this route — ranging from 64% to 85% on time.

  • Mornings85% on time · p90 30 min · 425 flights
  • Middays82% on time · p90 30 min · 76 flights · limited
  • Overnights70% on time · p90 70 min · 517 flights
  • Evenings64% on time · p90 65 min · 576 flights

Best day of week

On-time rates are fairly even by day on this route — ranging from 70% to 76% on time.

  • Tuesdays76% on time · p90 40 min · 232 flights
  • Wednesdays74% on time · p90 55 min · 240 flights
  • Mondays74% on time · p90 65 min · 239 flights
  • Fridays71% on time · p90 50 min · 237 flights
  • Thursdays71% on time · p90 55 min · 236 flights
  • Saturdays70% on time · p90 65 min · 193 flights · limited
  • Sundays70% on time · p90 70 min · 217 flights
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Methodology

A flight is on time when it arrives within 15 minutes of schedule — the US DOT / BTS standard. Median and p90(the “1-in-10 bad day”) are read from the full arrival-delay distribution, never averaged across periods.

Figures cover a carrier’s own BTS-coded flights. Cells below ~200 flights are flagged as limited data. All numbers are pre-computed from public BTS On-Time Performance data.