Carrier route record
OOBUR→SFO
SkyWest Airlines · Burbank to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,181
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 39%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on BUR to SFO sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,181 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on BUR to SFO runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 53 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,155 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.69%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
64.6%
Every carrier on BUR to SFO, 3,042 flights
These figures cover 1,181 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.3% 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
SkyWest against every carrier on BUR to SFO
SkyWest flew 1,181 of the 3,042 flights on BUR to SFO, about 39% of it. Its 72.3% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 64.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 72.3% to Southwest at 39.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 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 |
Departure window
When SkyWest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 22 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am104 flights79.6%
- 8am–11am403 flights62.8%
- 11am–2pm248 flights75.4%
- 2pm–5pm258 flights84.4%
- 5pm–8pm115 flights67.3%
- 8pm–5am53 flights66.0%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 84.4% on time, ahead of 8am–11am at 62.8%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 403 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on BUR to SFO through the year
December is the weak month at 63.5% on time, against 91.6% in March. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. October was the busiest month here, with 155 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 63.2%. 24 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 25,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%National Airspace System
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 9%Extreme weather
40% 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 10,000 minutes out of 25,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 25,378 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.69% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.51%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.3% 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 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.9% on time across 1,175 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,181 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 SkyWest on BUR to SFO
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. March runs 91.6% on time and December 63.5%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,155 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BUR to SFO, every carrier
- SkyWest on SFO to BUR, the return leg
- United Airlines on BUR to SFO64.1%
- Southwest Airlines on BUR to SFO39.8%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.