Route reliability record
SBA→DEN
Santa Barbara to Denver
- Flights
- 1,058
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 916 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,058 SBA to DEN flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly SBA to DEN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 93.0%, against 85.5% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 82 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,045 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.66%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
85.5% on time across 771 flights
These figures cover 1,058 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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
Which airline is most reliable on SBA to DEN
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 | 771 | 85.5% | 70 min | 0.65% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 287 | 85.3% | 50 min | 0.70% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on SBA to DEN
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am509 flights93.3%
- 8am–11am15 flights—
- 11am–2pm465 flights77.6%
- 2pm–5pm34 flights73.5%
- 5pm–8pm35 flights85.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.3% of the time, against 73.5% for the afternoon window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 509 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SBA to DEN by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On SBA to DEN, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.3% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 73.5%, a wide gap of 19.8 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.3%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm77.6%
- 2–5pm73.5%
- 5–8pm85.7%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
July is the worst month at 77.6% on time, 14 points below April, the best at 91.9%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 105 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 93.0% on time and Saturday the weakest at 80.5%, a spread of 13 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 9,738 reported delay minutes.
- 38%National Airspace System
- 35%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,364 of the 9,738 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,738 reported delay minutes.
38% 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 3,686 minutes out of 9,738, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.66%, 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 actually costs
5.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 916 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.4% on time across 1,058 flights, 13 points below 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 13 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,058 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DEN after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,058 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 85.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,045 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SBA to DEN questions
How often is SBA to DEN delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.5% of the 1,058 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is SBA to DEN compared with the rest of the country?
85.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SBA to DEN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.3% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 73.5%, 20 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are July delays on SBA to DEN?
July is the weakest month at 77.6% on time, compared with 91.9% in April. Across the year that is 14 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to SBA — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- United Airlines on SBA to DEN85.5%
- Southwest Airlines on SBA to DEN85.3%
- SBA to SFO, a related route61.3%
- PHX to DEN, a related route76.7%
- SBA to PHX, a related route85.7%
- United Airlines on-time record85.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record85.3%
- 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
Direction matters. SBA to DEN and DEN to SBA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.