Carrier route record
UASFO→AUS
United Airlines · San Francisco to Austin
- Flights
- 1,653
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 59%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on SFO to AUS lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,653 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's SFO to AUS record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 51 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,633 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.73%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.8%
Every carrier on SFO to AUS, 2,792 flights
These figures cover 1,653 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on SFO to AUS
United flew 1,653 of the 2,792 flights on SFO to AUS, most of the route. Its 82.7% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 100.0% to Southwest at 44.8%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 Airlinesthin sample | 8 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 343 | 84.9% | 59 min | 0.87% | B+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,653 | 82.7% | 52 min | 0.73% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 444 | 61.0% | 73 min | 1.58% | D |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 344 | 44.8% | 64 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on SFO to AUS
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 26 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–8am259 flights96.9%
- 8am–11am143 flights82.1%
- 11am–2pm562 flights79.9%
- 2pm–5pm114 flights71.2%
- 5pm–8pm405 flights79.8%
- 8pm–5am170 flights85.2%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.9% of the time, against 71.2% for the afternoon window. That is 26 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 562 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on SFO to AUS through the year
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 68.6%. August is the strongest month at 91.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 22 points. May was the busiest month here, with 159 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 79.3%. 6 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 15,000 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.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
54% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 54 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 14,716 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 96.9% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.73%, below the national 1.81% 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 1,504 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.8% on time across 1,655 flights, 4 points below 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,653 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.
What to do with this
Booking United on SFO to AUS
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. August runs 91.0% on time and May 68.6%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 1,633 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to AUS, every carrier
- United on AUS to SFO, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on SFO to AUS84.9%
- Delta Air Lines on SFO to AUS61.0%
- Southwest Airlines on SFO to AUS44.8%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.