Carrier route record
UAFLL→SFO
United Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to San Francisco
- Flights
- 482
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 39%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on FLL to SFO earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 482 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's FLL to SFO record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 69 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 480 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
78.7%
Every carrier on FLL to SFO, 1,236 flights
These figures cover 482 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on FLL to SFO
United flew 482 of the 1,236 flights on FLL to SFO, about 39% of it. Its 84.2% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.2% to JetBlue at 75.2%.
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) | 482 | 84.2% | 60 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 754 | 75.2% | 58 min | 0.27% | B+ |
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 23 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am319 flights92.2%
- 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 92.2% 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 319 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, Thursday is the strongest day at 89.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.3%, a spread of 14 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on FLL to SFO runs when it is late
United on FLL to SFO often beats the schedule: 191 of 480 completed flights, 40%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 76 late arrivals split 35 under half an hour, 23 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 18 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early191 flights39.8%
- Within 15 min213 flights44.4%
- 15–29 min late35 flights7.3%
- 30–59 min late23 flights4.8%
- 1–2 hours late6 flights1.3%
- 2+ hours late12 flights2.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 480 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 71 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 26 still arrived on time. 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 FLL to SFO
The latest arrival of the period was on 16 March 2026, 5 hours 6 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as national airspace system delay.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 16 March 2026 | 5 hours 6 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 25 December 2025 | 4 hours 6 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 21 December 2025 | 3 hours 48 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 3 January 2026 | 3 hours 46 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 5 January 2026 | 3 hours 40 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 74% of the 4,586 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 74%National Airspace System
- 13%Carrier
- 12%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
74% 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 3,401 minutes out of 4,586, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 4,586 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are 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 3.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 83.5% on time across 485 flights, within half a point 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. 482 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. 482 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 84.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 480 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 SFO75.2%
- 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 7.05 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.