Carrier route record

UASFO→SBA

United Airlines · San Francisco to Santa Barbara

Flights: 1,032
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 64%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.

United on SFO to SBA lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six 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 1,032 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, United's SFO to SBA record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 46 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,019 completed flights

Avg delay

57 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.87%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.1%

Every carrier on SFO to SBA, 1,610 flights

These figures cover 1,032 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

United against every carrier on SFO to SBA

United flew 1,032 of the 1,610 flights on SFO to SBA, most of the route. Its 82.2% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 82.2% to SkyWest at 76.2%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on SFO to SBA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines (this page)	1,032	82.2%	57 min	0.87%	B+
SkyWest Airlines	578	76.2%	83 min	2.60%	B

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 1,032 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am334 flights84.0%
11am–2pm85 flights82.1%
2pm–5pm204 flights78.6%
5pm–8pm105 flights87.5%
8pm–5am304 flights80.9%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 87.5% on time. The full set of windows spans 9 points.

Across the year

United on SFO to SBA through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.March best, May worst

Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 72.7%. March is the strongest month at 88.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 16 points. September was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 87.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.9%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why United runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 10,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Late-arriving aircraft
59%
Carrier
29%
National Airspace System
12%

59% 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 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 59 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 10,248 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.87%, below the national 1.81% 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

5.3% 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 68.3% on time across 1,032 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,032 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. 1,032 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 82.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,019 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures