Carrier route record
UASFO→SBA
United Airlines · San Francisco to Santa Barbara
- Flights
- 986
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 59%
- 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 SBA lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 986 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate United on SFO to SBA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 979 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.51%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
78.2%
Every carrier on SFO to SBA, 1,678 flights
These figures cover 986 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on SFO to SBA
United flew 986 of the 1,678 flights on SFO to SBA, most of the route. Its 79.9% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 79.9% to SkyWest at 75.8%.
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) | 986 | 79.9% | 55 min | 0.51% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 692 | 75.8% | 77 min | 2.02% | B |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on SFO to SBA
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 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 986 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am334 flights80.2%
- 11am–2pm85 flights82.1%
- 2pm–5pm142 flights81.6%
- 5pm–8pm126 flights84.8%
- 8pm–5am299 flights76.0%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 84.8% on time. The full set of windows spans 9 points.
Across the year
United on SFO to SBA through the year
July is the worst month at 58.1% on time, 30 points below March, the best at 88.5%. 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 118 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 87.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.1%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on SFO to SBA runs when it is late
United on SFO to SBA often beats the schedule: 267 of 979 completed flights, 27%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 197 late arrivals split 71 under half an hour, 68 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 58 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early267 flights27.3%
- Within 15 min515 flights52.6%
- 15–29 min late71 flights7.3%
- 30–59 min late68 flights6.9%
- 1–2 hours late39 flights4.0%
- 2+ hours late19 flights1.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 979 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
27 of 189 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. 35 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on SFO to SBA
The latest arrival of the period was on 15 February 2026, 4 hours 4 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 15 February 2026 | 4 hours 4 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 13 October 2025 | 3 hours 42 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 5 January 2026 | 3 hours 37 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 5 November 2025 | 3 hours 14 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 October 2025 | 3 hours 13 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 64% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 64%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
64% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 64 to one. The split is drawn from 10,843 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.51%, below the national 1.89% 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
5.9% 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 65.2% on time across 985 flights, 15 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 15 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 986 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 SBA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 986 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 79.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 979 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to SBA, every carrier
- United on SBA to SFO, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on SFO to SBA75.8%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) 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.