Route reliability record
BUR→SFO
Burbank to San Francisco
- Flights
- 3,042
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 326 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route draws a D. About one flight in three arrive at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 3,042 flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,181 at 72.3% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 130 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,998 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.22%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
72.3% on time across 1,181 flights
These figures cover 3,042 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BUR to SFO
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 72.3% of the time; United Airlines manages 64.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,524 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,181 | 72.3% | 79 min | 1.69% | C |
| United Airlines | 1,524 | 64.1% | 67 min | 0.66% | D+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 337 | 39.8% | 58 min | 2.08% | F |
SkyWest leads United by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 22 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am466 flights78.9%
- 8am–11am541 flights57.3%
- 11am–2pm474 flights58.7%
- 2pm–5pm724 flights70.4%
- 5pm–8pm531 flights61.0%
- 8pm–5am306 flights57.4%
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 78.9% of the time, against 57.3% for the morning window. That is 22 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 724 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 55 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 30.9%. March is the strongest month at 85.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 55 points. March was the busiest month here, with 310 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 75.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.7%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 58% of the 73,000 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.
- 58%National Airspace System
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
58% 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 43,000 minutes out of 73,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 73,490 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.22% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.23%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 326 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.0% on time across 3,036 flights, 12 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 12 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,042 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. March runs 85.5% on time and May 30.9%, a swing of 55 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 2,998 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BUR to SFO questions
How often is BUR to SFO delayed?
About one flight in three arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 35.4% of the 3,042 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on BUR to SFO?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 72.3% on time across 1,181 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 64.1%, a gap of 8 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BUR to SFO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 78.9% on time. The 8am–11am window is the weakest at 57.3%, 22 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are May delays on BUR to SFO?
May is the weakest month at 30.9% on time, compared with 85.5% in March. Across the year that is 55 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to BUR — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record72.3%
- United Airlines on-time record64.1%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record39.8%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
Direction matters. BUR to SFO and SFO to BUR are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.