Carrier route record
UAFLL→SFO
United Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to San Francisco
- Flights
- 491
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 39%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on FLL to SFO lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 491 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's FLL to SFO record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 62 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 487 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.41%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.5%
Every carrier on FLL to SFO, 1,265 flights
These figures cover 491 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on FLL to SFO
United flew 491 of the 1,265 flights on FLL to SFO, about 39% of it. Its 83.8% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 83.8% to JetBlue at 76.7%.
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) | 491 | 83.8% | 61 min | 0.41% | B+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 774 | 76.7% | 56 min | 0.52% | B+ |
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 23 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–8am50 flights85.4%
- 8am–11am278 flights92.4%
- 11am–2pm12 flights—
- 2pm–5pm1 flights—
- 5pm–8pm147 flights69.0%
- 8pm–5am3 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 92.4% of the time, against 69.0% for the evening window. That is 23 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 278 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on FLL to SFO through the year
February is the weak month at 71.4% on time, against 94.8% in March. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. December was the busiest month here, with 64 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.7%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 69% of the 4,832 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 69%National Airspace System
- 17%Carrier
- 12%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%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 3,344 minutes out of 4,832, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 4,832 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.41%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 2,584 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 runs 85.9% on time across 493 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 491 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 FLL to SFO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 491 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 83.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 487 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to SFO, every carrier
- United on SFO to FLL, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on FLL to SFO76.7%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.