Carrier route record
WNBUR→SFO
Southwest Airlines · Burbank to San Francisco
- Flights
- 337
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on BUR to SFO earns an F, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 39.8% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 38 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average about an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 337 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 1,181 at 72.3% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on BUR to SFO runs 38 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 378 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
39.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 329 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.08%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
64.6%
Every carrier on BUR to SFO, 3,042 flights
These figures cover 337 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.8% 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
Southwest against every carrier on BUR to SFO
Southwest flew 337 of the 3,042 flights on BUR to SFO, about 11% of it. Its 39.8% on time is 25 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 64.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 72.3% to Southwest at 39.8%.
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 Airlines (this page)thin 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
When Southwest 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 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am22 flights—
- 8am–11am96 flights23.3%
- 11am–2pm96 flights45.7%
- 2pm–5pm56 flights39.3%
- 5pm–8pm38 flights42.1%
- 8pm–5am29 flights—
Scale runs 15% to 50%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 45.7% on time, ahead of 8am–11am at 23.3%. 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 96 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on BUR to SFO through the year
- Jan–Mar 202677 flights77.9%
- Apr–Jun 2026260 flights28.2%
Scale runs 20% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 39.8% on time across 337 flights.
Split by quarter, Southwest on BUR to SFO logged 77 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 260 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 39.8% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 52.9% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 28.3%. 25 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 66% of the 11,000 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.
- 66%National Airspace System
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
66% 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 7,560 minutes out of 11,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 11,493 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.08% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.30%.
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. 18.8% 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 51.8% on time across 337 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 337 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 Southwest on BUR to SFO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 337 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 39.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 329 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BUR to SFO, every carrier
- Southwest on SFO to BUR, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on BUR to SFO72.3%
- United Airlines on BUR to SFO64.1%
- Southwest 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.