Carrier route record
UABUR→SFO
United Airlines · Burbank to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,662
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 54%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on BUR to SFO earns a D+, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 57.8% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 20 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average about an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 1,662 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 928 at 72.7% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so United on BUR to SFO runs 20 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 195 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
57.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,651 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.60%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
59.3%
Every carrier on BUR to SFO, 3,104 flights
These figures cover 1,662 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 19.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on BUR to SFO
United flew 1,662 of the 3,104 flights on BUR to SFO, most of the route. Its 57.8% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 59.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 72.7% to Southwest at 40.4%.
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 (this page) | 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
United flight numbers on BUR to SFO
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 41 points, against 32 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am334 flights79.3%
- 8am–11am63 flights58.1%
- 11am–2pm227 flights38.7%
- 2pm–5pm430 flights61.4%
- 5pm–8pm379 flights52.0%
- 8pm–5am229 flights47.8%
Scale runs 30% to 85%.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 38.7% on time against 79.3% 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 430 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 74.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 50.0%, a spread of 24 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on BUR to SFO runs when it is late
The 697 late arrivals split 152 under half an hour, 232 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 313 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early371 flights22.5%
- Within 15 min583 flights35.3%
- 15–29 min late152 flights9.2%
- 30–59 min late232 flights14.1%
- 1–2 hours late236 flights14.3%
- 2+ hours late77 flights4.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,651 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 594 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 44 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 147 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at SFO.
The worst days
Worst days for United on BUR to SFO
The latest arrival of the period was on 17 July 2026, 12 hours 47 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in February 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 17 July 2026 | 12 hours 47 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 February 2026 | 9 hours 13 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 February 2026 | 8 hours 26 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 August 2026 | 6 hours 22 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 15 February 2026 | 5 hours 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 69% of the 47,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 69%National Airspace System
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
69% 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 33,000 minutes out of 47,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 47,300 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.60%, below the national 1.89% 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
19.0% 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 80.2% on time across 1,663 flights, 22 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 22 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,662 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. 1,651 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 SFO72.7%
- Southwest Airlines on BUR to SFO40.4%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Hollywood Burbank (BUR) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- 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
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.