Carrier route record
UADFW→SFO
United Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to San Francisco
- Flights
- 852
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 21%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 852 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so United on DFW to SFO runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 58 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 844 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.82%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
62.0%
Every carrier on DFW to SFO, 4,125 flights
These figures cover 852 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.5% 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 DFW to SFO
United flew 852 of the 4,125 flights on DFW to SFO, about 21% of it. Its 71.8% on time is 10 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 62.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 76.5% to Frontier at 59.0%. 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 | 17 | 76.5% | 29 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 852 | 71.8% | 91 min | 0.82% | C+ |
| American Airlines | 3,071 | 59.3% | 68 min | 2.74% | D |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 185 | 59.0% | 63 min | 3.78% | D− |
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 51 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–8am362 flights91.6%
- 8am–11am36 flights77.8%
- 11am–2pm79 flights40.5%
- 2pm–5pm39 flights53.8%
- 5pm–8pm195 flights64.2%
- 8pm–5am141 flights52.5%
Scale runs 30% to 95%. 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 40.5% on time against 91.6% 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 362 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 65.4%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United 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 22,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 24 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 21,586 reported delay minutes.
36% 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 7,875 minutes out of 22,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, 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. 13.5% 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.
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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.4% on time across 854 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 852 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. 852 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 71.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 844 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 SFO59.3%
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to SFO59.0%
- 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 7.04 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.