Carrier route record
OOSBA→SFO
SkyWest Airlines · Santa Barbara to San Francisco
- Flights
- 692
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 41%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on SBA to SFO earns a D, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 55.6% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 22 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average a little over an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 692 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so SkyWest on SBA to SFO runs 22 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 217 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
55.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 678 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.73%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
61.3%
Every carrier on SBA to SFO, 1,677 flights
These figures cover 692 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 SBA to SFO
SkyWest flew 692 of the 1,677 flights on SBA to SFO, about 41% of it. Its 55.6% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 61.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 65.2% to SkyWest at 55.6%.
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 | 985 | 65.2% | 72 min | 0.71% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 692 | 55.6% | 71 min | 1.73% | D |
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 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 50 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am56 flights71.7%
- 8am–11am345 flights50.9%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm145 flights72.7%
- 5pm–8pm63 flights71.0%
- 8pm–5am83 flights23.2%
Scale runs 15% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 23.2% on time, against 72.7% for the 2pm–5pm 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 345 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on SBA to SFO through the year
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 42.3%. January is the strongest month at 77.8%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 36 points. June was the busiest month here, with 90 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 66.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 45.9%, a spread of 20 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on SBA to SFO runs when it is late
The 301 late arrivals split 98 under half an hour, 91 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 112 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early130 flights19.2%
- Within 15 min247 flights36.4%
- 15–29 min late98 flights14.5%
- 30–59 min late91 flights13.4%
- 1–2 hours late73 flights10.8%
- 2+ hours late39 flights5.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 678 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
31 of 245 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 13% of them. In the other direction, 87 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 SBA to SFO
The latest arrival of the period was on 18 July 2026, 16 hours 2 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The five worst days are spread across July, October, December, November and January, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 18 July 2026 | 16 hours 2 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 4 October 2025 | 9 hours 39 minutes | Carrier |
| 24 December 2025 | 8 hours 58 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 November 2025 | 6 hours 26 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 13 January 2026 | 5 hours 54 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 56% of the 21,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 56%National Airspace System
- 26%Carrier
- 14%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%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 12,000 minutes out of 21,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 21,412 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.73% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.
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 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 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.8% on time across 692 flights, 20 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 20 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 692 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 SkyWest on SBA to SFO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 692 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 55.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 678 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SBA to SFO, every carrier
- SkyWest on SFO to SBA, the return leg
- United Airlines on SBA to SFO65.2%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.