Route reliability record
SFO→SBP
San Francisco to San Luis Obispo
- Flights
- 1,144
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 191 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 1,144 SFO to SBP flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly SFO to SBP: a 5pm–8pm departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.5% of the time and Saturday flights 83.2%, against 74.9% 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
74.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,126 completed flights
Avg delay
101 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.05%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
75.6% on time across 963 flights
These figures cover 1,144 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
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 | 963 | 75.6% | 112 min | 1.14% | B |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 181 | 70.9% | 54 min | 0.55% | C+ |
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 half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am217 flights72.4%
- 11am–2pm188 flights71.3%
- 2pm–5pm187 flights74.0%
- 5pm–8pm259 flights81.5%
- 8pm–5am293 flights73.8%
Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 71.3% on time against 81.5% for 5pm–8pm. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 293 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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 64.8% on time, 22 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 83.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 65.8%. 17 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 29,000 reported delay minutes.
- 32%Carrier
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 16%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 28,705 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.05% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.52%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.9% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 62.1% on time across 1,145 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,144 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 June 64.8%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,126 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to SBP questions
How often is SFO to SBP delayed?
About 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 25.1% of the 1,144 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is SFO to SBP compared with the rest of the country?
74.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 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 81.5% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 71.3%, 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 SBP?
June is the weakest month at 64.8% on time, compared with 87.1% in March. Across the year that is 22 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 SBP75.6%
- United Airlines on SFO to SBP70.9%
- SFO to LAX, a related route73.9%
- PHX to SBP, a related route83.1%
- SFO to SEA, a related route73.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record75.6%
- United Airlines on-time record70.9%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.