Flight number record

UA 488

United Airlines · Burbank to San Francisco

Route: BUR → SFO
Departs: 07:15
Flights: 315
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 488, check with United Airlines.

UA 488 lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 315 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.

On time

79.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 314 completed flights

Avg delay

60 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.32%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

6.4%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 315 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Schedule

When UA 488 flies

UA 488 flies BUR to SFO without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:15, used on 79 of 315 flights, with 07:00 (64 flights) and 07:17 (36 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 07:1579 flights25.1%
Departs 07:0064 flights20.3%
Departs 07:1736 flights11.4%

Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.

A 07:15 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and UA 488 runs 10 points worse at 79.0%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

UA 488 next to BUR to SFO

Every carrier on BUR to SFO combined arrived on time 64.6% of the time across 3,042 flights, so UA 488 is 14 points ahead of it. United flew 1,524 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 64.1% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, close to this flight's figure.

UA 488 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 488thin sample	315	79.0%	60 min	0.32%	B+
All United Airlines on BUR–SFO	1,524	64.1%	67 min	0.66%	D+
All carriers on BUR–SFO	3,042	64.6%	69 min	1.22%	D
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 488 quarter by quarter

UA 488 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 96.7% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 68.1%, a swing of 29 points on roughly 79 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.

Jul–Sep 202585 flights72.9%
Oct–Dec 202578 flights84.6%
Jan–Mar 202661 flights96.7%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights68.1%

Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 488 did best on Saturday at 90.7% on time and worst on Friday at 68.9%. Each day rests on about 45 flights, so a gap of 22 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 488 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 65% of the 3,925 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

National Airspace System
65%
Carrier
21%
Late-arriving aircraft
14%

65% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 2,562 minutes out of 3,925, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 3,925 delay minutes reported on UA 488.

Cancellations are rare at 0.32%, below the national 1.81% 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

6.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The same number turns up on seven other city pairs in the data, including SFO to RDU (47), SFO to ORD (45) and SFO to IND (34), but none flew often enough under UA 488 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to BUR to SFO only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 315 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 488

For a booking, read UA 488 as 79.0% on time with 0.32% cancelled over 315 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.

Where to go next

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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures