Carrier route record
UASFO→FLL
United Airlines · San Francisco to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 493
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 39%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on SFO to FLL earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 45 minutes. That rests on 493 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's SFO to FLL record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 83 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 491 completed flights
Avg delay
46 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.41%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.2%
Every carrier on SFO to FLL, 1,270 flights
These figures cover 493 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 FLL
United flew 493 of the 1,270 flights on SFO to FLL, about 39% of it. Its 85.9% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 85.9% to JetBlue at 78.2%.
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) | 493 | 85.9% | 46 min | 0.41% | A+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 777 | 78.2% | 71 min | 0.39% | B+ |
Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 493 flights.
- 5am–8am56 flights89.3%
- 8am–11am129 flights92.2%
- 11am–2pm23 flights—
- 2pm–5pm11 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am274 flights83.8%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 92.2% of the time, against 83.8% for the overnight window. That is 8 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 274 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on SFO to FLL through the year
October is the best month on the calendar at 94.3% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. December was the busiest month here, with 66 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 92.7% on time and Saturday the weakest at 77.9%. 15 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 45% of the 3,195 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
45% 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 3,195 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 45 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 3,195 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.2% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.41%, 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 2.9% 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 2,584 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 runs 83.8% on time across 491 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 493 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 SFO to FLL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 493 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 85.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 491 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to FLL, every carrier
- United on FLL to SFO, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on SFO to FLL78.2%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) 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.