Carrier route record
UASBA→SFO
United Airlines · Santa Barbara to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,032
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 64%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on SBA to SFO sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,032 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so United on SBA to SFO runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 93 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,021 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.07%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
62.9%
Every carrier on SBA to SFO, 1,611 flights
These figures cover 1,032 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.3% 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
United against every carrier on SBA to SFO
United flew 1,032 of the 1,611 flights on SBA to SFO, most of the route. Its 68.3% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 62.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 68.3% to SkyWest at 53.2%.
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 (this page) | 1,032 | 68.3% | 71 min | 1.07% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 579 | 53.2% | 68 min | 2.25% | F |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on SBA to SFO
Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 51 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am326 flights90.7%
- 8am–11am32 flights62.5%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm416 flights60.5%
- 5pm–8pm188 flights58.4%
- 8pm–5am70 flights40.0%
Scale runs 30% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 40.0% on time, against 90.7% 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 416 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on SBA to SFO through the year
Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 43.5%. January is the strongest month at 85.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 42 points. September was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 79.9% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 60.8%. 19 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 64% of the 23,000 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.
- 64%National Airspace System
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%Carrier
- 1%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 15,000 minutes out of 23,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 23,144 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.07% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.3% 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 82.2% on time across 1,032 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,032 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 United on SBA to SFO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,032 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 68.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,021 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.