Carrier route record
UASFO→FLL
United Airlines · San Francisco to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 485
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 39%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on SFO to FLL lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 45 minutes on average. That rests on 485 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's SFO to FLL record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 62 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 485 completed flights
Avg delay
44 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
79.3%
Every carrier on SFO to FLL, 1,242 flights
These figures cover 485 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on SFO to FLL
United flew 485 of the 1,242 flights on SFO to FLL, about 39% of it. Its 83.5% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 83.5% to JetBlue at 76.5%.
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) | 485 | 83.5% | 44 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 757 | 76.5% | 69 min | 0.13% | B+ |
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
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 13 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am56 flights89.3%
- 8am–11am129 flights92.2%
- 11am–2pm23 flights—
- 2pm–5pm11 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am266 flights79.3%
Scale runs 70% 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 79.3% for the overnight window. That is 13 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 266 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on SFO to FLL through the year
July is the worst month at 51.6% on time, 43 points below October, the best at 94.3%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 66 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 89.5% on time and Saturday the weakest at 76.1%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on SFO to FLL runs when it is late
Most of the lateness is short. 47 of the 80 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 14 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early114 flights23.5%
- Within 15 min291 flights60.0%
- 15–29 min late47 flights9.7%
- 30–59 min late19 flights3.9%
- 1–2 hours late8 flights1.6%
- 2+ hours late6 flights1.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 485 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 70 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 23 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 33 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at FLL.
The worst days
Worst days for United on SFO to FLL
The latest arrival of the period was on 26 December 2025, 4 hours 28 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 26 December 2025 | 4 hours 28 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 March 2026 | 3 hours 26 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 5 January 2026 | 3 hours 20 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 June 2026 | 3 hours 11 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 July 2026 | 2 hours 15 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 3,523 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,523 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 44 to one. The split is drawn from 3,523 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 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are 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 8.3% 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 84.2% on time across 482 flights, within half a point 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. 485 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. 485 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 83.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 485 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 FLL76.5%
- 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 7.05 million flight records
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.