Route reliability record
SFO→SBA
San Francisco to Santa Barbara
- Flights
- 1,610
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 262 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route 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 1,610 SFO to SBA flights, of which United Airlines flew 1,032 at 82.2% on time.
Best time to fly SFO to SBA: a 5pm–8pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 86.8%, against 80.1% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
80.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,578 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.49%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
82.2% on time across 1,032 flights
These figures cover 1,610 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
Which airline is most reliable on SFO to SBA
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 82.2% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 76.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 578 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,032 | 82.2% | 57 min | 0.87% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 578 | 76.2% | 83 min | 2.60% | B |
United leads SkyWest by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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 | 81.5% | 82.2% | 0.87% | 5pm–8pm, Sat | — |
| 2. SFO → SBASan Francisco to Santa Barbara | SkyWest Airlines | 74.2% | 76.2% | 2.60% | 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 10 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am480 flights83.3%
- 11am–2pm90 flights80.9%
- 2pm–5pm372 flights74.5%
- 5pm–8pm212 flights84.5%
- 8pm–5am456 flights79.1%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 84.5% on time. The full set of windows spans 10 points.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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, 17 points below August, the best at 87.2%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 150 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 72.8%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 21,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
40% 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 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 21,296 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 8,455 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.49% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.50%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.1% 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 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 62.9% on time across 1,611 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 1,610 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. August runs 87.2% on time and June 70.0%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,578 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to SBA questions
How often is SFO to SBA delayed?
About 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 19.9% of the 1,610 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SFO to SBA?
United Airlines leads at 82.2% on time across 1,032 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 76.2%, a gap of 6 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 84.5% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 74.5%, 10 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 87.2% in August. Across the year that is 17 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 SBA82.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on SFO to SBA76.2%
- SFO to LAX, a related route73.9%
- PHX to SBA, a related route80.8%
- SFO to SEA, a related route73.7%
- United Airlines on-time record82.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record76.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.