Flight number record
UA 1578
United Airlines · San Francisco to Santa Barbara
- Route
- SFO → SBA
- Departs
- 10:40
- Flights
- 309
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1578, check with United Airlines.
UA 1578 lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average. That rests on 309 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
79.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 308 completed flights
Avg delay
43 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.32%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.9%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 309 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 4 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Schedule
When UA 1578 flies
UA 1578 flies SFO to SBA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 10:40, used on 114 of 309 flights, with 10:29 (70 flights) and 10:47 (38 flights) next.
- Departs 10:40114 flights36.9%
- Departs 10:2970 flights22.7%
- Departs 10:4738 flights12.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 10:40 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and UA 1578 runs 4 points worse at 79.5%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
UA 1578 next to SFO to SBA
Every carrier on SFO to SBA combined arrived on time 78.2% of the time across 1,678 flights, so UA 1578 is about level with it. United flew 986 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.9% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, close to this flight's figure.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1578thin sample | 309 | 79.5% | 43 min | 0.32% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on SFO–SBA | 986 | 79.9% | 55 min | 0.51% | B+ |
| All carriers on SFO–SBA | 1,678 | 78.2% | 65 min | 1.13% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1578 quarter by quarter
UA 1578 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 91.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 69.4%, a swing of 22 points on roughly 77 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
- Oct–Dec 202567 flights91.0%
- Jan–Mar 202689 flights84.1%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights73.6%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights69.4%
Scale runs 60% to 95%.
By weekday, UA 1578 did best on Wednesday at 90.7% on time and worst on Friday at 65.9%. Each day rests on about 44 flights, so a gap of 25 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1578 runs when it is late
UA 1578 often beats the schedule: 82 of 308 completed flights, 27%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 63 late arrivals split 21 under half an hour, 30 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 12 an hour or more. Not one arrived two hours late.
- 15+ min early82 flights26.6%
- Within 15 min163 flights52.9%
- 15–29 min late21 flights6.8%
- 30–59 min late30 flights9.7%
- 1–2 hours late12 flights3.9%
- 2+ hours late0 flights0.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 308 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 49 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 5 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 19 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at SBA.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1578
The latest arrival of the period was on 23 June 2026, 1 hour 41 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 23 June 2026 | 1 hour 41 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 5 February 2026 | 1 hour 40 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 22 March 2026 | 1 hour 29 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 July 2026 | 1 hour 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 23 January 2026 | 1 hour 17 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why UA 1578 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 2,676 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,676 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 to one. The split is drawn from 2,676 delay minutes reported on UA 1578.
Cancellations are rare at 0.32%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The same number turns up on three other city pairs in the data, including BNA to SFO (140), EWR to LAX (55) and SEA to SFO (45), but none flew often enough under UA 1578 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to SFO to SBA only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 309 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking UA 1578
For a booking, read UA 1578 as 79.5% on time with 0.32% cancelled over 309 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to SBA, every carrier and departure
- SBA to SFO, the return direction
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- United Airlines on-time record
- Every United Airlines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
A flight number here means United Airlines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.