Route profile
SMF→PHX
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Sacramento to Phoenix, 647 miles.
Right now
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Route reliability
July 2023 – July 2026
Better than 88% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 11,253 flights. How this is calculated
SMF → PHX arrives on time 84.3% of the time; the return trip, PHX → SMF, arrives on time 81.0% of the time, a 3.3-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
SMF → PHX spends 18.5 minutes on the ground on a 647-mile trip: 12.5 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at SMF and 6.0 minutes from touchdown to gate at PHX.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
What stands out
This route holds up about the same all year, a steadier seasonal pattern than 96% of 3,357 comparable routes.
87.6% on time in its best month (February) against 78.2% in its worst (June).
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Ranked against every other route with the same kind of figure and at least 3,357 in the comparison.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
28 min late
against a median of 7 min early
Percentiles over 11,253 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at PHX after arriving from SMF.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 31% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 15% | High risk |
| 60 min | 9.3% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 4.8% | Low risk |
| 120 min | 2.6% | Low risk |
This is one leg of a connection. Gate changes and the next flight's own schedule matter too. And a connection can fail before delay is even the question — this route cancels 0.36% of the time and diverts 0.14% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 11,196 arrivals on this route that landed later than the connection time less 30 minutes to reach the next gate.
The worst tenth of arrivals on this route land at least 28 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 11,253 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
SMF → PHX flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 93.7% of the time, against 75.2% for 6–9 PM departures, a gap of 18.5 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 4 AM: too few flights to score
- 5 AM: 94.9% on time from 988 flights
- 6 AM: 93.8% on time from 1,192 flights
- 7 AM: 88.8% on time from 339 flights
- 8 AM: 94.4% on time from 479 flights
- 9 AM: 92.0% on time from 952 flights
- 10 AM: 91.0% on time from 585 flights
- 11 AM: 85.9% on time from 385 flights
- 12 PM: 82.6% on time from 1,193 flights
- 1 PM: 83.4% on time from 424 flights
- 2 PM: 74.8% on time from 334 flights
- 3 PM: 74.3% on time from 406 flights
- 4 PM: 78.3% on time from 1,289 flights
- 5 PM: 78.4% on time from 367 flights
- 6 PM: 69.8% on time from 377 flights
- 7 PM: 77.0% on time from 1,196 flights
- 8 PM: 74.8% on time from 310 flights
- 9 PM: 76.1% on time from 377 flights
- 10 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why SMF → PHX runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for SMF → PHX. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on SMF → PHX, at 53.7%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 93.7% of the time and 6–9 PM departures 75.2%.
How this route holds up in bad weather
July 2023 – July 2026
The harder-hit end is PHX, where the flight lands. Its figure counts departures from PHX, so it says more about how that airport copes than about this route. Bad weather cancels 3.9 times the normal rate at PHX against 1.6 times at SMF. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: SMF 1.0% against 0.6%, PHX 2.5% against 0.6%. Flights that did leave PHX in bad weather arrived on time 53.7% of the time, against 80.6% in normal hours.
Bad weather and normal hours at the airports
Scheduled departures, July 2023 – July 2026| Departures from | SMF | PHX |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 1.0% | 2.5% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 0.6% | 0.6% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 83.0% | 53.7% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 83.2% | 80.6% |
| Departures in bad weather | 12,018 | 6,215 |
SkyWest Airlines (1.6% cancelled against 1.0% for the other carriers at SMF) and American Airlines (1.7% cancelled against 1.0% for the other carriers at SMF) cancelled more departures from SMF in bad weather than the other carriers there did in the same months. None of the route’s other carriers was clearly better. One more carrier flies this route but has too few bad-weather departures from SMF to compare.
This route’s airlines in bad weather at SMF
All departures from SMF| Airline | Bad-weather departures | Cancelled | Other carriers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 6,823 | 1.0%about level | 1.2% |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,842 | 1.6%above the others | 1.0% |
| American Airlines | 745 | 1.7%above the others | 1.0% |
These are airport figures, not route figures: every scheduled departure from SMF and PHX, to any destination, in hours the weather report called bad. The airline rows count each carrier’s departures from SMF on every route.
Weather source and limits. In full: SMF (airlines), PHX, What Weather Costs Each Airport, Who Cancels More When the Weather Turns, Airports That Change Places When Weather Turns.
Airlines on this route
Carriers with at least 200 flights, by the airline that operated each one.
| Carrier | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 6,431 | 82.4% | 0.44% | -4 min | 4.4% |
| American Airlines | 3,178 | 86.9% | 0.28% | -10 min | 5.8% |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,136 | 85.7% | 0.18% | -10 min | 5.1% |
| Envoy Air | 508 | 89.3% | 0.39% | -11 min | 3.8% |
Southwest Airlines flew 57.1% of the 11,253 flights listed.
Envoy Air arrived on time 6.9 percentage points more often than Southwest Airlines on this route.
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
| Flight | Scheduled | Operations | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA1867 American Airlines | 6:00 AM | 980 | 92.7% |
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Saturday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 5.7 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 87.6%
- Feb: 87.6%
- Mar: 84.1%
- Apr: 87.2%
- May: 80.1%
- Jun: 78.2%
- Jul: 79.2%
- Aug: 85.3%
- Sep: 87.4%
- Oct: 85.0%
- Nov: 85.6%
- Dec: 86.3%
June is historically the weakest month and February the strongest, a spread of 9.4 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 80.8% from 282 flights
- August 2023: 85.4% from 293 flights
- September 2023: 89.0% from 237 flights
- October 2023: 89.5% from 295 flights
- November 2023: 91.2% from 308 flights
- December 2023: 90.5% from 305 flights
- January 2024: 86.7% from 294 flights
- February 2024: 88.2% from 265 flights
- March 2024: 87.7% from 316 flights
- April 2024: 88.4% from 329 flights
- May 2024: 77.2% from 334 flights
- June 2024: 82.9% from 281 flights
- July 2024: 82.0% from 285 flights
- August 2024: 84.9% from 306 flights
- September 2024: 86.7% from 294 flights
- October 2024: 90.1% from 324 flights
- November 2024: 90.5% from 307 flights
- December 2024: 86.3% from 322 flights
- January 2025: 89.9% from 288 flights
- February 2025: 90.3% from 279 flights
- March 2025: 83.1% from 351 flights
- April 2025: 88.0% from 346 flights
- May 2025: 80.9% from 352 flights
- June 2025: 76.8% from 315 flights
- July 2025: 79.2% from 315 flights
- August 2025: 85.9% from 264 flights
- September 2025: 86.8% from 241 flights
- October 2025: 74.2% from 280 flights
- November 2025: 75.7% from 330 flights
- December 2025: 82.6% from 346 flights
- January 2026: 86.1% from 299 flights
- February 2026: 84.4% from 288 flights
- March 2026: 81.9% from 354 flights
- April 2026: 85.3% from 339 flights
- May 2026: 82.1% from 341 flights
- June 2026: 74.9% from 271 flights
- July 2026: 74.7% from 277 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 81.2% against 85.4% in the 12 months before — declining by 4.2 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 11,253 SMF → PHX flight records from the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, covering July 2023 – July 2026. Late means 15 or more minutes past scheduled arrival; cancelled and diverted flights are left out of on-time rates.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: How Long a Layover Needs to Be · Two Airlines on One Route · Best Time of Day to Fly From Major US Airports
Analysis last recomputed