Route reliability record
BUR→SFO
Burbank to San Francisco
- Flights
- 3,104
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 326 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route draws a D. Roughly one flight in two arrives 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 3,104 BUR to SFO flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 928 at 72.7% on time.
Best time to fly BUR to SFO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 77.9% of the time and Saturday flights 73.7%, against 59.3% for the route overall.
SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 72.7% on time across 928 flights.
Key figures
On time
59.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,060 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.22%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
72.7% on time across 928 flights
These figures cover 3,104 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 72.7% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 40.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 514 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 928 | 72.7% | 88 min | 2.16% | C |
| United Airlines | 1,662 | 57.8% | 68 min | 0.60% | D+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 514 | 40.4% | 56 min | 1.56% | F |
The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 32 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 32 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Flights on BUR to SFO
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Burbank to San Francisco
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 5 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LAX → SJCLos Angeles to San Jose | SkyWest Airlines | 90.3% | 90.7% | 0.39% | 8am–11am, Tue | OO 3883 18:00 |
| 2. LGB → OAKLong Beach to Oakland | Southwest Airlines | 88.1% | 88.5% | 0.45% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. ONT → SJCOntario to San Jose | Southwest Airlines | 85.8% | 85.9% | 0.08% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. LGB → SJCLong Beach to San Jose | Southwest Airlines | 85.8% | 86.0% | 0.24% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 5. ONT → OAKOntario to Oakland | Southwest Airlines | 85.5% | 86.0% | 0.55% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 29 points, against 32 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am469 flights77.9%
- 8am–11am470 flights49.6%
- 11am–2pm564 flights54.6%
- 2pm–5pm716 flights65.1%
- 5pm–8pm556 flights55.1%
- 8pm–5am329 flights49.1%
Scale runs 40% to 85%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 49.1% on time, against 77.9% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 716 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BUR to SFO by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On BUR to SFO, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 77.9% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 49.1%, a wide gap of 28.8 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am77.9%
- 8–11am49.6%
- 11am–2pm54.6%
- 2–5pm65.1%
- 5–8pm55.1%
- 8pm–5am49.1%
best all US flightsScale 40% to 95%.
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 73.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 52.5%, a spread of 21 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
National Airspace System accounts for 60% of the 86,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 60%National Airspace System
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
60% 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 52,000 minutes out of 86,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 85,905 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.22% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.19%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
16.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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 74.9% on time across 3,101 flights, 16 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 16 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,104 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in SFO after this flight
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. 3,060 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BUR to SFO questions
How often is BUR to SFO delayed?
Roughly one flight in two arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 40.7% of the 3,104 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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 72.7% on time across 928 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 40.4%, a gap of 32 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 77.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 49.1%, 29 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
- Hollywood Burbank (BUR) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on BUR to SFO72.7%
- United Airlines on BUR to SFO57.8%
- Southwest Airlines on BUR to SFO40.4%
- BUR to LAS, a related route80.4%
- LAX to SFO, a related route60.1%
- BUR to PHX, a related route83.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record72.7%
- United Airlines on-time record57.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record40.4%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.
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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.