Carrier route record
UASBA→SFO
United Airlines · Santa Barbara to San Francisco
- Flights
- 985
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 59%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on SBA to SFO draws a C+. About 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 985 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so United on SBA to SFO runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 121 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 978 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.71%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
61.3%
Every carrier on SBA to SFO, 1,677 flights
These figures cover 985 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on SBA to SFO
United flew 985 of the 1,677 flights on SBA to SFO, most of the route. Its 65.2% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 61.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first 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 (this page) | 985 | 65.2% | 72 min | 0.71% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 692 | 55.6% | 71 min | 1.73% | D |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on SBA to SFO
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 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 49 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am319 flights88.6%
- 8am–11am53 flights49.1%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm416 flights55.6%
- 5pm–8pm127 flights59.5%
- 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 88.6% 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 75.0% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 58.9%, a spread of 16 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on SBA to SFO runs when it is late
The 340 late arrivals split 102 under half an hour, 112 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 126 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early185 flights18.9%
- Within 15 min453 flights46.3%
- 15–29 min late102 flights10.4%
- 30–59 min late112 flights11.5%
- 1–2 hours late79 flights8.1%
- 2+ hours late47 flights4.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 978 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 270 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 27 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 97 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 United on SBA to SFO
The latest arrival of the period was on 25 December 2025, 21 hours 1 minute behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 25 December 2025 | 21 hours 1 minute | National Airspace System |
| 17 March 2026 | 13 hours 43 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 1 April 2026 | 6 hours 27 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 March 2026 | 6 hours 14 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 June 2026 | 6 hours 14 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 66% of the 24,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 66%National Airspace System
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 11%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
66% 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 16,000 minutes out of 24,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 24,326 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.71%, 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 costs
12.9% 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 79.9% on time across 986 flights, 15 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 15 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 985 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. 985 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 65.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 978 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.