Carrier route record
OOSFO→BUR
SkyWest Airlines · San Francisco to Burbank
- Flights
- 1,175
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 39%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on SFO to BUR lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,175 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on SFO to BUR from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,152 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.62%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.0%
Every carrier on SFO to BUR, 3,036 flights
These figures cover 1,175 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% 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
SkyWest against every carrier on SFO to BUR
SkyWest flew 1,175 of the 3,036 flights on SFO to BUR, about 39% of it. Its 78.9% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 80.9% to Southwest at 51.8%. One 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,524 | 80.9% | 55 min | 0.13% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 1,175 | 78.9% | 71 min | 1.62% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 337 | 51.8% | 63 min | 3.26% | F− |
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 20 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–8am134 flights83.6%
- 8am–11am329 flights82.4%
- 11am–2pm300 flights82.2%
- 2pm–5pm114 flights72.1%
- 5pm–8pm222 flights75.0%
- 8pm–5am76 flights63.9%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.9% on time, against 83.6% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 329 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on SFO to BUR through the year
December is the weak month at 63.7% on time, against 89.3% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. October was the busiest month here, with 155 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 86.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 72.7%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 17,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 8%Extreme weather
35% 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 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 17,298 reported delay minutes.
34% 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 5,883 minutes out of 17,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.62% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.34%.
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. 9.5% 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 326 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 72.3% on time across 1,181 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,175 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 SkyWest on SFO to BUR
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 89.3% on time and December 63.7%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,152 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to BUR, every carrier
- SkyWest on BUR to SFO, the return leg
- United Airlines on SFO to BUR80.9%
- Southwest Airlines on SFO to BUR51.8%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.