Carrier route record
OOSFO→SAN
SkyWest Airlines · San Francisco to San Diego
- Flights
- 1,442
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 21%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on SFO to SAN draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,442 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,666 at 72.8% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so SkyWest on SFO to SAN runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 172 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
60.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,404 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.36%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
62.2%
Every carrier on SFO to SAN, 6,723 flights
These figures cover 1,442 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on SFO to SAN
SkyWest flew 1,442 of the 6,723 flights on SFO to SAN, about 21% of it. Its 60.1% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 62.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 82.9% to Southwest at 47.9%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 72.8% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 47.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,070 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 331 | 82.9% | 44 min | 1.21% | B |
| United Airlines | 2,666 | 72.8% | 54 min | 0.34% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 1,442 | 60.1% | 59 min | 2.36% | D |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 214 | 48.3% | 95 min | 4.21% | F− |
| Southwest Airlines | 2,070 | 47.9% | 62 min | 1.35% | F |
The spread between United and Southwest is 25 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 25 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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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 43 points, against 25 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am127 flights91.9%
- 8am–11am399 flights56.8%
- 11am–2pm341 flights49.4%
- 2pm–5pm207 flights65.5%
- 5pm–8pm256 flights60.4%
- 8pm–5am112 flights58.3%
Scale runs 40% to 95%.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 49.4% on time against 91.9% 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 399 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on SFO to SAN through the year
August is the worst month at 31.5% on time, 52 points below January, the best at 83.7%. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 180 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 78.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 49.8%, a spread of 29 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on SFO to SAN runs when it is late
The 560 late arrivals split 167 under half an hour, 186 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 207 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early109 flights7.8%
- Within 15 min735 flights52.4%
- 15–29 min late167 flights11.9%
- 30–59 min late186 flights13.2%
- 1–2 hours late163 flights11.6%
- 2+ hours late44 flights3.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,404 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 463 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 35 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 132 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 SAN.
The worst days
Worst days for SkyWest on SFO to SAN
The latest arrival of the period was on 18 March 2026, 6 hours 59 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 18 March 2026 | 6 hours 59 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 January 2026 | 6 hours 51 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 25 October 2025 | 5 hours 13 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 July 2026 | 4 hours 31 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 July 2026 | 4 hours 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 57% of the 33,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 57%National Airspace System
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
57% 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 19,000 minutes out of 33,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 32,738 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.36% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
14.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 447 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 runs 59.8% on time across 1,482 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,442 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 SAN
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 83.7% on time and August 31.5%, a swing of 52 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,404 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to SAN, every carrier
- SkyWest on SAN to SFO, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on SFO to SAN82.9%
- United Airlines on SFO to SAN72.8%
- Frontier Airlines on SFO to SAN48.3%
- Southwest Airlines on SFO to SAN47.9%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- 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.