Route profile
SMF→SEA
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Sacramento to Seattle, 605 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 91% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 13,050 flights. How this is calculated
SMF → SEA arrives on time 82.7% of the time; the return trip, SEA → SMF, arrives on time 79.9% of the time, a 2.7-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
SMF → SEA spends 28.3 minutes on the ground on a 605-mile trip: 16.6 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at SMF and 11.7 minutes from touchdown to gate at SEA.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
29 min late
against a median of 7 min early
Percentiles over 13,050 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at SEA after arriving from SMF.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 34% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 17% | High risk |
| 60 min | 9.4% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 3.9% | Low risk |
| 120 min | 2.0% | 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 0.34% of the time and diverts 0.16% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 12,984 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 29 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 13,050 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
SMF → SEA flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 90.6% of the time, against 72.4% for 9 PM–5 AM departures, a gap of 18.2 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 4 AM: too few flights to score
- 5 AM: 98.1% on time from 368 flights
- 6 AM: 93.5% on time from 2,141 flights
- 7 AM: 92.1% on time from 432 flights
- 8 AM: 72.8% on time from 544 flights
- 9 AM: 86.1% on time from 398 flights
- 10 AM: 86.2% on time from 835 flights
- 11 AM: 88.6% on time from 864 flights
- 12 PM: 81.1% on time from 872 flights
- 1 PM: 88.0% on time from 718 flights
- 2 PM: 77.4% on time from 1,100 flights
- 3 PM: 71.9% on time from 289 flights
- 4 PM: 83.3% on time from 707 flights
- 5 PM: 78.3% on time from 791 flights
- 6 PM: 75.9% on time from 725 flights
- 7 PM: 72.2% on time from 869 flights
- 8 PM: 73.5% on time from 794 flights
- 9 PM: 72.3% on time from 529 flights
- 10 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why SMF → SEA 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 → SEA. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on SMF → SEA, at 36.3%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 90.6% of the time and 9 PM–5 AM departures 72.4%.
How this route holds up in bad weather
July 2023 – July 2026
Bad weather raises cancellations by a similar amount at both ends of SMF to SEA: 1.6 times the normal rate at SMF and 1.9 times at SEA. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: SMF 1.0% against 0.6%, SEA 1.5% against 0.8%. Flights that did leave SEA in bad weather arrived on time 75.4% of the time, against 79.3% in normal hours.
Bad weather and normal hours at the airports
Scheduled departures, July 2023 – July 2026| Departures from | SMF | SEA |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 1.0% | 1.5% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 0.6% | 0.8% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 83.0% | 75.4% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 83.2% | 79.3% |
| Departures in bad weather | 12,018 | 43,416 |
SkyWest Airlines (1.6% 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% |
| Delta Air Lines | 734 | 1.0%about level | 1.0% |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,842 | 1.6%above the others | 1.0% |
These are airport figures, not route figures: every scheduled departure from SMF and SEA, 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), SEA, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 5,247 | 87.3% | 0.11% | -12 min | 3.7% |
| Alaska Airlines | 3,772 | 80.1% | 0.93% | -4 min | 3.6% |
| Southwest Airlines | 3,766 | 78.5% | 0.08% | -3 min | 4.7% |
| Delta Air Lines | 265 | 86.7% | 0.38% | -13 min | 5.7% |
SkyWest Airlines flew 40.2% of the 13,050 flights listed.
SkyWest Airlines arrived on time 8.8 percentage points more often than Southwest Airlines on this route.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Tuesday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 8.2 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 85.2%
- Feb: 89.5%
- Mar: 86.5%
- Apr: 84.0%
- May: 80.6%
- Jun: 75.2%
- Jul: 81.2%
- Aug: 79.2%
- Sep: 80.8%
- Oct: 84.7%
- Nov: 87.4%
- Dec: 83.2%
June is historically the weakest month and February the strongest, a spread of 14.3 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 86.0% from 344 flights
- August 2023: 84.7% from 359 flights
- September 2023: 85.1% from 369 flights
- October 2023: 84.5% from 342 flights
- November 2023: 86.2% from 341 flights
- December 2023: 87.0% from 337 flights
- January 2024: 83.0% from 321 flights
- February 2024: 93.9% from 279 flights
- March 2024: 86.0% from 293 flights
- April 2024: 79.8% from 307 flights
- May 2024: 78.4% from 357 flights
- June 2024: 75.1% from 362 flights
- July 2024: 78.1% from 417 flights
- August 2024: 76.3% from 423 flights
- September 2024: 78.6% from 414 flights
- October 2024: 88.0% from 387 flights
- November 2024: 91.7% from 305 flights
- December 2024: 83.9% from 252 flights
- January 2025: 84.3% from 289 flights
- February 2025: 84.4% from 267 flights
- March 2025: 86.4% from 311 flights
- April 2025: 86.2% from 319 flights
- May 2025: 77.6% from 380 flights
- June 2025: 72.7% from 430 flights
- July 2025: 80.8% from 455 flights
- August 2025: 77.3% from 426 flights
- September 2025: 79.1% from 398 flights
- October 2025: 81.5% from 395 flights
- November 2025: 84.7% from 341 flights
- December 2025: 78.2% from 295 flights
- January 2026: 88.3% from 309 flights
- February 2026: 90.1% from 282 flights
- March 2026: 87.0% from 350 flights
- April 2026: 85.6% from 369 flights
- May 2026: 85.6% from 389 flights
- June 2026: 77.9% from 407 flights
- July 2026: 80.8% from 429 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 82.7% against 81.9% in the 12 months before — broadly unchanged.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 13,050 SMF → SEA 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