OnTimeStats

Historical on-time performance

Portland to Sacramento

479 miData through Dec 2025Source: US DOT · BTS

Flights on PDX–SMF arrive on time 82% of the time over the last 12 months.

On-time rate82%arrived within 15 min
p90 delay30 min1 in 10 flights is worse (tail risk)
Cancelled0.3%of scheduled flights

based on 1,876 flights over the last 12 months. On-time means arriving within 15 minutes (BTS standard).

By airline

How each carrier compares

Too close to call — no single carrier is clearly more on-time here.

  • SkyWest Airlines
    On-time83%
    Medianon time
    p9035 min
    Cancel0.3%
    Flights619
  • Southwest Airlines
    On-time81%
    Medianon time
    p9030 min
    Cancel0.2%
    Flights1,257

Why flights run late

Delay causes

  • Airline26%
  • Weather1%
  • Air traffic (NAS)7%
  • Late aircraft66%
  • Security0%

Most delay minutes here are attributed to Late aircraft.

Over time

On-time trend

By season

On-time rate by month

When to fly

Best time to fly PDX → SMF

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

Best time of day

Mornings are the most reliable time of day to fly this route — 93% on time.

  • Mornings93% on time · p90 5 min · 1,475 flights
  • Middays88% on time · p90 15 min · 1,280 flights
  • Afternoons79% on time · p90 30 min · 793 flights
  • Evenings75% on time · p90 40 min · 963 flights
  • Overnights73% on time · p90 45 min · 908 flights

Best day of week

On-time rates are fairly even by day on this route — ranging from 77% to 90% on time.

  • Tuesdays90% on time · p90 10 min · 776 flights
  • Wednesdays87% on time · p90 15 min · 788 flights
  • Saturdays86% on time · p90 25 min · 496 flights
  • Mondays83% on time · p90 25 min · 862 flights
  • Sundays82% on time · p90 30 min · 768 flights
  • Thursdays81% on time · p90 30 min · 860 flights
  • Fridays77% on time · p90 35 min · 869 flights
Advertisement

Keep exploring

Related pages

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.