Carrier route record
UABUR→SFO
United Airlines · Burbank to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,524
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 50%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on BUR to SFO draws a D+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,524 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so United on BUR to SFO runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 135 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,514 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.66%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
64.6%
Every carrier on BUR to SFO, 3,042 flights
These figures cover 1,524 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.6% 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
United against every carrier on BUR to SFO
United flew 1,524 of the 3,042 flights on BUR to SFO, most of the route. Its 64.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 64.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two 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 | 1,181 | 72.3% | 79 min | 1.69% | C |
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,524 | 64.1% | 67 min | 0.66% | D+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 337 | 39.8% | 58 min | 2.08% | F |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on BUR to SFO
Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 44 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–8am340 flights79.4%
- 8am–11am42 flights78.6%
- 11am–2pm130 flights35.2%
- 2pm–5pm410 flights65.8%
- 5pm–8pm378 flights61.1%
- 8pm–5am224 flights56.5%
Scale runs 25% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 35.2% on time against 79.4% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 410 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on BUR to SFO through the year
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 33.5%. March is the strongest month at 85.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 52 points. May was the busiest month here, with 182 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 78.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 55.9%. 22 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 68% of the 37,000 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.
- 68%National Airspace System
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
68% 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 25,000 minutes out of 37,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 36,619 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.66%, 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 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. 15.6% 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 80.9% on time across 1,524 flights, 17 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 17 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,524 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 United on BUR to SFO
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. March runs 85.5% on time and May 33.5%, a swing of 52 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 1,514 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BUR to SFO, every carrier
- United on SFO to BUR, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on BUR to SFO72.3%
- Southwest Airlines on BUR to SFO39.8%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.