Carrier route record
UASFO→BUR
United Airlines · San Francisco to Burbank
- Flights
- 1,524
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 50%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on SFO to BUR lands a B+, 3 points 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,524 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate United 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
80.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,519 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.13%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.0%
Every carrier on SFO to BUR, 3,036 flights
These figures cover 1,524 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 BUR
United flew 1,524 of the 3,036 flights on SFO to BUR, most of the route. Its 80.9% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first 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 (this page) | 1,524 | 80.9% | 55 min | 0.13% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,175 | 78.9% | 71 min | 1.62% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 337 | 51.8% | 63 min | 3.26% | F− |
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 38 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–8am38 flights97.3%
- 8am–11am459 flights85.0%
- 11am–2pm45 flights59.1%
- 2pm–5pm423 flights75.9%
- 5pm–8pm269 flights82.1%
- 8pm–5am290 flights81.9%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 59.1% on time against 97.3% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 459 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on SFO to BUR through the year
June is the worst month at 68.0% on time, 26 points below October, the best at 93.9%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 182 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 75.3%. 10 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 58% of the 16,000 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.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
58% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 58 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 15,995 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 97.3% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.13%, 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
5.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 64.1% on time across 1,524 flights, 17 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 17 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,524 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 BUR
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 93.9% on time and June 68.0%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,519 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to BUR, every carrier
- United on BUR to SFO, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on SFO to BUR78.9%
- Southwest Airlines on SFO to BUR51.8%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) 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.