Carrier route record
UADFW→SFO
United Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to San Francisco
- Flights
- 914
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 21%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on DFW 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, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 914 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so United on DFW to SFO runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 71 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 907 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.66%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
60.8%
Every carrier on DFW to SFO, 4,264 flights
These figures cover 914 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on DFW to SFO
United flew 914 of the 4,264 flights on DFW to SFO, about 21% of it. Its 70.2% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 60.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.7% to Frontier at 53.6%. Two 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 Airlinesthin sample | 35 | 85.7% | 29 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 914 | 70.2% | 76 min | 0.66% | C+ |
| American Airlines | 3,096 | 58.2% | 67 min | 2.55% | D |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 219 | 53.6% | 58 min | 3.65% | F− |
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 49 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am344 flights92.6%
- 8am–11am36 flights77.8%
- 11am–2pm138 flights43.1%
- 2pm–5pm95 flights67.4%
- 5pm–8pm196 flights64.4%
- 8pm–5am105 flights43.8%
Scale runs 35% to 100%.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 43.1% on time against 92.6% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 344 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DFW to SFO through the year
June is the worst month at 46.4% on time, 52 points below March, the best at 98.4%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. June was the busiest month here, with 110 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 78.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 60.6%, a spread of 18 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on DFW to SFO runs when it is late
United on DFW to SFO often beats the schedule: 261 of 907 completed flights, 29%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 270 late arrivals split 63 under half an hour, 94 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 113 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early261 flights28.8%
- Within 15 min376 flights41.5%
- 15–29 min late63 flights6.9%
- 30–59 min late94 flights10.4%
- 1–2 hours late72 flights7.9%
- 2+ hours late41 flights4.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 907 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
38 of 277 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. 31 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on DFW to SFO
The latest arrival of the period was on 5 September 2025, 15 hours 38 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 5 September 2025 | 15 hours 38 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 January 2026 | 13 hours 45 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 May 2026 | 8 hours 21 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 25 January 2026 | 6 hours 3 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 July 2026 | 5 hours 19 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 45% of the 21,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%National Airspace System
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
45% 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 9,370 minutes out of 21,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 20,639 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.66%, 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
12.5% 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.
The 1,464 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.5% on time across 916 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 914 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 United on DFW to SFO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 914 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 70.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 907 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to SFO, every carrier
- United on SFO to DFW, the return leg
- American Airlines on DFW to SFO58.2%
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to SFO53.6%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- 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.