Carrier route record

UADTW→SFO

United Airlines · Detroit to San Francisco

Flights: 411
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 23%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 411 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so United on DTW to SFO runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 57 extra late arrivals.

On time

71.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 405 completed flights

Avg delay

78 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.22%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

67.7%

Every carrier on DTW to SFO, 1,799 flights

These figures cover 411 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.4% 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 DTW to SFO

United flew 411 of the 1,799 flights on DTW to SFO, about 23% of it. Its 71.9% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 67.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 71.9% to Delta at 66.5%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on DTW to SFO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines (this page)	411	71.9%	78 min	1.22%	C
Delta Air Lines	1,388	66.5%	63 min	0.79%	C+

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 411 flights.

5am–8am204 flights68.8%
8am–11am22 flights—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm185 flights73.5%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 60% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 73.5% on time. The full set of windows spans 5 points.

Across the year

United on DTW to SFO through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, June worst

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 52 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 62.3%. 22 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 8,920 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
41%
Late-arriving aircraft
29%
Carrier
27%
Extreme weather
4%

41% 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 3,623 minutes out of 8,920, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 8,920 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.22% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.24%.

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. 10.4% 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 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 83.5% on time across 409 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 411 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. 411 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 71.9% 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.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures