Route reliability record
SBA→SFO
Santa Barbara to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,677
- Period
- September 2025 to August 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 1,677 SBA to SFO flights, of which United Airlines flew 985 at 65.2% on time.
Best time to fly SBA to SFO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.1% of the time and Saturday flights 70.9%, against 61.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 160 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
61.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,656 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.13%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
65.2% on time across 985 flights
These figures cover 1,677 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 65.2% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 55.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 692 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 985 | 65.2% | 72 min | 0.71% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 692 | 55.6% | 71 min | 1.73% | D |
United leads SkyWest by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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.
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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 | 64.7% | 65.2% | 0.71% | 5am–8am, Sat | UA 2305 13:58 |
| 2. SBA → SFOSanta Barbara to San Francisco | SkyWest Airlines | 54.6% | 55.6% | 1.73% | 2pm–5pm, 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 10 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am375 flights86.1%
- 8am–11am398 flights50.6%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm561 flights60.0%
- 5pm–8pm190 flights63.3%
- 8pm–5am153 flights30.9%
Scale runs 20% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 30.9% on time, against 86.1% 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 561 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SBA to SFO 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 SFO, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 86.1% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 30.9%, a wide gap of 55.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am86.1%
- 8–11am50.6%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm60.0%
- 5–8pm63.3%
- 8pm–5am30.9%
best all US flightsScale 20% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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. July was the busiest month here, with 152 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 70.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 56.8%, a spread of 14 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
National Airspace System accounts for 61% of the 46,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 61%National Airspace System
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
61% 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 28,000 minutes out of 46,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 45,738 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.13% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.12%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
14.4% 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 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 78.2% on time across 1,678 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 1,677 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. 1,656 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 38.7% of the 1,677 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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 65.2% on time across 985 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 55.6%, a gap of 10 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 86.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 30.9%, 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 SFO65.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on SBA to SFO55.6%
- SBA to PHX, a related route85.7%
- LAX to SFO, a related route60.1%
- SBA to SLC, a related route94.2%
- United Airlines on-time record65.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record55.6%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.