Route reliability record
SFO→SBP
San Francisco to San Luis Obispo
- Flights
- 1,138
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 191 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 1,138 SFO to SBP flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly SFO to SBP: a 5pm–8pm departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 76.2% of the time and Saturday flights 81.5%, against 72.1% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 52 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,120 completed flights
Avg delay
98 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.14%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
73.1% on time across 834 flights
These figures cover 1,138 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SFO to SBP
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 834 | 73.1% | 114 min | 1.32% | C |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 304 | 69.4% | 60 min | 0.66% | C+ |
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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 14 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am279 flights72.4%
- 11am–2pm126 flights74.6%
- 2pm–5pm144 flights62.3%
- 5pm–8pm286 flights76.2%
- 8pm–5am303 flights71.5%
Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 76.2% on time. The full set of windows spans 14 points.
Explore
Filter SFO to SBP 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 SBP, the best departure window is 5pm–8pm at 76.2% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 62.3%, a wide gap of 13.9 points. All US flights leaving 5pm–8pm ran 68.0%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am72.4%
- 11am–2pm74.6%
- 2–5pm62.3%
- 5–8pm76.2%
- 8pm–5am71.5%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 30 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.
August is the worst month at 57.5% on time, 30 points below March, the best at 87.1%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 81.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 61.5%, a spread of 20 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 31,000 reported delay minutes.
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 15%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 15% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 30,546 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.14% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.44%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
10.4% 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 191 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 56.4% on time across 1,139 flights, 16 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 16 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,138 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 SBP 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. March runs 87.1% on time and August 57.5%, a swing of 30 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,120 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to SBP questions
How often is SFO to SBP delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.9% of the 1,138 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is SFO to SBP compared with the rest of the country?
72.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 5 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SFO to SBP?
The 5pm–8pm departure window is the strongest at 76.2% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 62.3%, 14 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 August delays on SFO to SBP?
August is the weakest month at 57.5% on time, compared with 87.1% in March. Across the year that is 30 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
- SBP to SFO — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on SFO to SBP73.1%
- United Airlines on SFO to SBP69.4%
- SFO to LAX, a related route70.9%
- PHX to SBP, a related route83.5%
- SFO to SEA, a related route72.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record73.1%
- United Airlines on-time record69.4%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. SFO to SBP and SBP 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.