Carrier route record
UADTW→SFO
United Airlines · Detroit to San Francisco
- Flights
- 407
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 23%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on DTW 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 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 407 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so United on DTW to SFO runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 64 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 405 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.49%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
66.4%
Every carrier on DTW to SFO, 1,792 flights
These figures cover 407 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.4% 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 DTW to SFO
United flew 407 of the 1,792 flights on DTW to SFO, about 23% of it. Its 70.9% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 66.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 70.9% to Delta at 65.1%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 407 | 70.9% | 81 min | 0.49% | C+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,385 | 65.1% | 61 min | 0.72% | C+ |
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 is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 407 flights.
- 5am–8am197 flights67.9%
- 8am–11am22 flights—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm188 flights72.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 72.2% on time. The full set of windows spans 4 points.
Across the year
United on DTW to SFO through the year
June is the worst month at 47.8% on time, 46 points below September, the best at 93.3%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 49 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 60.3%, a spread of 21 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on DTW to SFO runs when it is late
United on DTW to SFO often beats the schedule: 102 of 405 completed flights, 25%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 118 late arrivals split 34 under half an hour, 38 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 46 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early102 flights25.2%
- Within 15 min185 flights45.7%
- 15–29 min late34 flights8.4%
- 30–59 min late38 flights9.4%
- 1–2 hours late24 flights5.9%
- 2+ hours late22 flights5.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 405 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
26 of 113 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 23% of them. In the other direction, 31 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 DTW to SFO
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 December 2025, 12 hours 27 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 December 2025 | 12 hours 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 24 March 2026 | 8 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 November 2025 | 6 hours 8 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 December 2025 | 5 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 October 2025 | 5 hours 10 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 9,565 reported delay minutes.
- 40%National Airspace System
- 33%Carrier
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
40% 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 3,781 minutes out of 9,565, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 9,565 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.49%, 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
11.4% 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 2,079 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 85.5% on time across 406 flights, 15 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 15 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 407 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 DTW to SFO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 407 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 70.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 405 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to SFO, every carrier
- United on SFO to DTW, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to SFO65.1%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
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.