Route reliability record
SBP→SFO
San Luis Obispo to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,139
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 191 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns a D, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 56.4% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 21 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 1,139 SBP to SFO flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes late.
Best time to fly SBP to SFO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 64.7%, against 56.4% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 21 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 209 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
56.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,125 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.23%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
58.2% on time across 836 flights
These figures cover 1,139 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SBP to SFO
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 836 | 58.2% | 70 min | 1.32% | D |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 303 | 51.3% | 78 min | 0.99% | F+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on SBP 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.
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
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 59 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am286 flights81.6%
- 8am–11am224 flights32.4%
- 11am–2pm68 flights72.1%
- 2pm–5pm379 flights55.1%
- 5pm–8pm93 flights62.4%
- 8pm–5am89 flights22.7%
Scale runs 15% to 85%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 22.7% on time, against 81.6% 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 379 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SBP 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 SBP to SFO, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 81.6% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 22.7%, a wide gap of 58.9 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am81.6%
- 8–11am32.4%
- 11am–2pm72.1%
- 2–5pm55.1%
- 5–8pm62.4%
- 8pm–5am22.7%
best all US flightsScale 15% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 47 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.
August is the worst month at 33.3% on time, 47 points below January, the best at 80.4%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. October was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 64.7% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 48.8%, a spread of 16 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
National Airspace System accounts for 53% of the 36,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%National Airspace System
- 32%Carrier
- 9%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%Extreme weather
53% 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 19,000 minutes out of 36,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 35,647 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.23% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
16.4% 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 191 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 72.1% on time across 1,138 flights, 16 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 16 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,139 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 80.4% on time and August 33.3%, a swing of 47 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,125 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SBP to SFO questions
How often is SBP to SFO delayed?
Roughly one flight in two arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 43.6% of the 1,139 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is SBP to SFO compared with the rest of the country?
56.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 21 points against it. That is worth a D on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SBP to SFO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 81.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 22.7%, 59 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 August delays on SBP to SFO?
August is the weakest month at 33.3% on time, compared with 80.4% in January. Across the year that is 47 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 SBP — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on SBP to SFO58.2%
- United Airlines on SBP to SFO51.3%
- SBP to PHX, a related route81.7%
- LAX to SFO, a related route60.1%
- SBP to DEN, a related route82.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record58.2%
- United Airlines on-time record51.3%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. SBP to SFO and SFO to SBP are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed SBP to SFO’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.