Route reliability record
SFO→SBA
San Francisco to Santa Barbara
- Flights
- 1,678
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 262 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 1,678 SFO to SBA flights, of which United Airlines flew 986 at 79.9% on time.
Best time to fly SFO to SBA: a 5pm–8pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 86.7%, against 78.2% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,653 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.13%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
79.9% on time across 986 flights
These figures cover 1,678 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SFO to SBA
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 986 | 79.9% | 55 min | 0.51% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 692 | 75.8% | 77 min | 2.02% | B |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 79.9%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on SFO to SBA
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly San Francisco to Santa Barbara
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SFO → SBASan Francisco to Santa Barbara | United Airlines | 79.5% | 79.9% | 0.51% | 5pm–8pm, Sat | UA 1578 10:40 |
| 2. SFO → SBASan Francisco to Santa Barbara | SkyWest Airlines | 74.3% | 75.8% | 2.02% | 5pm–8pm, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 1,678 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am480 flights80.5%
- 11am–2pm90 flights80.9%
- 2pm–5pm433 flights75.0%
- 5pm–8pm237 flights83.3%
- 8pm–5am438 flights75.6%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 83.3% on time. The full set of windows spans 8 points.
Explore
Filter SFO to SBA by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On SFO to SBA, the best departure window is 5pm–8pm at 83.3% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 75.0%, a real gap of 8.3 points. All US flights leaving 5pm–8pm ran 68.0%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am80.5%
- 11am–2pm80.9%
- 2–5pm75.0%
- 5–8pm83.3%
- 8pm–5am75.6%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
June is the worst month at 70.0% on time, 16 points below September, the best at 86.2%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 152 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 67.6%, a spread of 19 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 23,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 to one. The split is drawn from 23,348 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 8,307 of the 23,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.13% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.36%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 262 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 61.3% on time across 1,677 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 1,678 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in SBA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 86.2% on time and June 70.0%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,653 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to SBA questions
How often is SFO to SBA delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.8% of the 1,678 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SFO to SBA?
United Airlines leads at 79.9% on time across 986 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 75.8%, a gap of 4 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SFO to SBA?
The 5pm–8pm departure window is the strongest at 83.3% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 75.0%, 8 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are June delays on SFO to SBA?
June is the weakest month at 70.0% on time, compared with 86.2% in September. Across the year that is 16 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- SBA to SFO — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- United Airlines on SFO to SBA79.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on SFO to SBA75.8%
- SFO to LAX, a related route70.9%
- PHX to SBA, a related route82.2%
- SFO to SEA, a related route72.3%
- United Airlines on-time record79.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record75.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. SFO to SBA and SBA to SFO are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.