Carrier route record
OOSAN→SFO
SkyWest Airlines · San Diego to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,482
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 22%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on SAN to SFO draws a D. Roughly one flight in two arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,482 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,666 at 67.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so SkyWest on SAN to SFO runs 18 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 175 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
59.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,410 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.96%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
59.5%
Every carrier on SAN to SFO, 6,763 flights
These figures cover 1,482 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on SAN to SFO
SkyWest flew 1,482 of the 6,763 flights on SAN to SFO, about 22% of it. Its 59.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 59.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 67.2% to Frontier at 37.9%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 67.2% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 52.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,070 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 2,666 | 67.2% | 57 min | 0.56% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 1,482 | 59.8% | 64 min | 1.96% | D |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 331 | 53.1% | 52 min | 1.51% | F |
| Southwest Airlines | 2,070 | 52.4% | 61 min | 1.30% | F |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 214 | 37.9% | 75 min | 5.14% | F− |
The spread between United and Southwest is 15 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 15 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on SAN to SFO
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Departure window
When SkyWest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 31 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am200 flights68.8%
- 8am–11am394 flights49.6%
- 11am–2pm355 flights53.7%
- 2pm–5pm202 flights69.0%
- 5pm–8pm210 flights59.7%
- 8pm–5am121 flights80.2%
Scale runs 40% to 85%.
The 8pm–5am window is the strongest at 80.2% on time. The full set of windows spans 31 points.
Across the year
SkyWest on SAN to SFO through the year
August is the worst month at 25.7% on time, 59 points below September, the best at 84.7%. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 180 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 69.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 55.6%, a spread of 14 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on SAN to SFO runs when it is late
The 567 late arrivals split 135 under half an hour, 200 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 232 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early343 flights24.3%
- Within 15 min500 flights35.5%
- 15–29 min late135 flights9.6%
- 30–59 min late200 flights14.2%
- 1–2 hours late169 flights12.0%
- 2+ hours late63 flights4.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,410 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 532 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 47 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 82 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 SkyWest on SAN to SFO
The latest arrival of the period was on 28 December 2025, 7 hours 3 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across December, January, May, October and July, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 28 December 2025 | 7 hours 3 minutes | Carrier |
| 3 January 2026 | 4 hours 58 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 28 May 2026 | 4 hours 42 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 23 October 2025 | 4 hours 34 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 July 2026 | 4 hours 30 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 64% of the 36,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 64%National Airspace System
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
64% 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 23,000 minutes out of 36,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 36,224 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.96% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 2.90%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
16.5% 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 447 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8pm–5am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 60.1% on time across 1,442 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,482 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking SkyWest on SAN to SFO
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 84.7% on time and August 25.7%, a swing of 59 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,410 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SAN to SFO, every carrier
- SkyWest on SFO to SAN, the return leg
- United Airlines on SAN to SFO67.2%
- Alaska Airlines on SAN to SFO53.1%
- Southwest Airlines on SAN to SFO52.4%
- Frontier Airlines on SAN to SFO37.9%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.