Flight profile · SkyWest Airlines
OO3881
Seattle (SEA) to Sacramento (SMF) · scheduled 8:25 AM – 10:33 AM
How OO3881 performs
875 operations, January 2024 – July 2026.
OO3881 arrived on time 90.8% of the time, against 79.9% for all SEA → SMF flights, so this departure is 10.9 percentage points better than the route as a whole. Against SkyWest Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 3.5 points better.
OO3881’s scheduled departure has moved during the period FlyerIntel has on file: it typically left around 7:30 AM earlier on, and around 8:30 AM more recently — a 60-minute shift, not the few minutes of day-to-day rounding every published schedule carries. Confirm the current departure time before booking around an older listing.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 875 operations, January 2024 – July 2026 · If OO3881 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
What stands out
How OO3881 compares to other flight numbers, not just to itself.
This flight runs unusually far ahead of the SEA → SMF route as a whole, better than 92% of 11,788 comparable flight numbers.
90.8% on time for this specific departure, against 79.9% for every SEA → SMF flight.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · January 2024 – July 2026 · The one thing about this specific departure that ranks most extreme against every other published flight number, out of everything FlyerIntel checks — shown only when something clears a real statistical bar, not for every flight.
Where OO3881 is right now
A live reading, only if you ask for it. It is not part of the reliability record above.
Ask for the position of OO3881 right now, if receivers on the ground are hearing it. Nothing is requested until you press the button.
Against the rest of the route
| Flight or route | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OO3881 | 90.8% | 0.00% | -8 min | 3.3% | 875 |
| SkyWest Airlines on SEA → SMF | 87.3% | 0.11% | -6 min | 3.4% | 5,284 |
| All SEA → SMF flights | 79.9% | 0.40% | -3 min | 4.4% | 13,124 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · January 2024 – July 2026
Why OO3881 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for OO3881 on SEA → SMF. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering January 2024 – July 2026
Does a late aircraft delay this flight?
How often the plane that flies OO3881 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
The aircraft flying OO3881 came in 15 or more minutes late on 5% of the departures where its previous flight is known. There are not enough departures in both groups to say how the flight left after a late one and after an on-time one.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into SEA just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 776 of 875 departures in all. A departure is left out when that flight is unknown, was cancelled or diverted, or the aircraft had sat for more than 12 hours. A flight the airline cancelled never left and is not in the count, and one flown by a substitute aircraft is matched to the aircraft that flew it, not to the one first planned.
Against the network at the same turn length
| Share of departures | Inbound landed 15+ late |
|---|---|
| OO3881 | 5% |
| Network, same turn | 18% |
The schedule leaves a normal turn: enough time to clean and board if the aircraft is on time, little to spare if it is not.
The network row is every flight with a scheduled turn of 45 to 59 minutes. How often OO3881’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is lower than the network’s. There are not enough departures in both groups to compare how it left.
More: Which Flight Numbers Pay for a Late Aircraft lists the flight numbers that pass a late aircraft on.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering January 2024 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves SEA late, does that still matter by the time it reaches SMF?
OO3881 pushes back an average of 0.7 minutes late and reaches the gate at SMF an average of 2.9 minutes early. The 3.6 minutes between those two figures are slack the published schedule already carries, which is why a late pushback on this flight does not reliably become a late arrival. It spends 26.9 minutes on the taxiways at SEA, 2.3 minutes longer than a typical SEA departure in the same hour.
On arrival at SMF, OO3881 spends 5.3 min taxiing from touchdown to the gate — ground time a connecting passenger sits through before they can even leave the aircraft, on top of however late the flight itself ran. That is about what any arrival at SMF spends on the ground before reaching the gate.
Departure delay is averaged over every pushback and arrival delay over every completed arrival, so the two counts differ by the flights that never reached SMF. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 33,301 departures from SEA scheduled in the clock hour OO3881 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at SMF (172,477 flights), not just OO3881’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · January 2024 – July 2026
The hour it leaves SEA
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. OO3881 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 33,301 departures from SEA are scheduled in the 8 AM–9 AM hour over the period, against 510,205 across the whole day.
OO3881 is scheduled out of SEA at 8:25 AM, in the 8 AM–9 AM bank. Departures from SEA in that hour arrive on time 83.7% of the time against 79.1% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 4.6 points better before anything about this particular flight is considered.
The two airport figures cover every departure from SEA to every destination, so they describe the slot rather than this journey — the like-for-like comparison against the route is above. Hours are scheduled local, and a number whose schedule moved between banks inside the period has no single hour and is not described here at all. Why the hour matters.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · January 2024 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.
By day of week
Does OO3881 run worse on particular days?
Monday is historically the most reliable day and Thursday the least, a gap of 5.5 percentage points.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · January 2024 – July 2026 · Days with fewer than 120 operations are not scored.
Other routes OO3881 has flown
A flight number is a slot in a schedule, and carriers reassign it. These are the other city pairs this number served in the analysis period.
| Route | Operated | Flights | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| SMF→SEA Sacramento to Seattle | January 8, 2024 – July 31, 2026 | 540 | 90.9% |
| ONT→SEA Ontario to Seattle | May 7, 2024 – June 6, 2024 | 31 | — |
| SEA→ONT Seattle to Ontario | May 7, 2024 – June 6, 2024 | 31 | — |
| BUF→JFK Buffalo to New York | December 16–23, 2023 | 8 | — |
| RIC→DTW Richmond to Detroit | November 5, 2023 – December 6, 2023 | 32 | — |
| LGA→MKE New York to Milwaukee | October 28, 2023 – November 3, 2023 | 7 | — |
| DTW→MDW Detroit to Chicago | October 9–27, 2023 | 17 | — |
| OAK→LAX Oakland to Los Angeles | September 5, 2023 – October 8, 2023 | 29 | — |
| IND→JFK Indianapolis to New York | September 9, 2023 | 1 | — |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route OO3881 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.
When it goes wrong
The average describes a usual day. This is the day that ruins a connection.
14 min late
against a median of 8 min early
Percentiles over 875 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering January 2024 – July 2026
Other flights on this route
Same airports, same journey, different odds of arriving on time.
| Flight | Airline | On time | Median arrival | Operations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OO3881 this flight | SkyWest Airlines | 90.8% | 8 min early | 875 |
| OO4125 | SkyWest Airlines | 90.5% | 11 min early | 776 |
| OO4043 | SkyWest Airlines | 86.8% | 5 min early | 691 |
Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. OO3881 is placed in the same ordering rather than left out of it; the rows around it are the most punctual departures on the route, not all of them, so this is a comparison and not a rank. Schedules change; confirm the departure still operates before booking around this.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 875 records of OO3881 operating SEA → SMF, published by the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics. A flight counts as delayed when it arrives 15 or more minutes after schedule. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and reported separately. Flight numbers are resolved as carrier plus number plus route, because the same number serves different routes over time.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: Most and Least Reliable Flight Numbers · The Delay You Inherit · Making Up Time in the Air
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