Route reliability record
SBA→SFO
Santa Barbara to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,611
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 262 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,611 SBA to SFO flights, of which United Airlines flew 1,032 at 68.3% on time.
Best time to fly SBA to SFO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.3% of the time and Saturday flights 72.4%, against 62.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 147 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,585 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.49%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
68.3% on time across 1,032 flights
These figures cover 1,611 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.1% 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
Which airline is most reliable on SBA to SFO
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 68.3% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 53.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 579 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,032 | 68.3% | 71 min | 1.07% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 579 | 53.2% | 68 min | 2.25% | F |
The spread between United and SkyWest 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
Flights on SBA to SFO
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Santa Barbara to San Francisco
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SBA → SFOSanta Barbara to San Francisco | United Airlines | 67.6% | 68.3% | 1.07% | 5am–8am, Sat | UA 2305 14:09 |
| 2. SBA → SFOSanta Barbara to San Francisco | SkyWest Airlines | 52.0% | 53.2% | 2.25% | 5pm–8pm, Sun | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 55 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am376 flights88.3%
- 8am–11am385 flights46.9%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm500 flights62.6%
- 5pm–8pm236 flights63.4%
- 8pm–5am114 flights33.6%
Scale runs 25% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 33.6% on time, against 88.3% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 500 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 39 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.
Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 44.2%. January is the strongest month at 83.2%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 39 points. May was the busiest month here, with 151 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 72.4% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 57.4%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 56% of the 41,000 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.
- 56%National Airspace System
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
56% 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 41,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 40,994 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.49% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.12%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.1% 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 262 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.1% on time across 1,610 flights, 17 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 17 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,611 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in SFO after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 83.2% on time and April 44.2%, a swing of 39 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of April before you think about anything else. 1,585 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SBA to SFO questions
How often is SBA to SFO delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 37.1% of the 1,611 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SBA to SFO?
United Airlines leads at 68.3% on time across 1,032 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 53.2%, a gap of 15 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SBA to SFO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 33.6%, 55 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 April delays on SBA to SFO?
April is the weakest month at 44.2% on time, compared with 83.2% in January. Across the year that is 39 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
- SFO to SBA — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- United Airlines on SBA to SFO68.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on SBA to SFO53.2%
- SBA to PHX, a related route84.4%
- LAX to SFO, a related route64.8%
- SBA to DEN, a related route83.6%
- United Airlines on-time record68.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record53.2%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. SBA to SFO and SFO 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.