Carrier route record
OOSFO→SBP
SkyWest Airlines · San Francisco to San Luis Obispo
- Flights
- 963
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 84%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on SFO to SBP sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 963 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on SFO to SBP from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 947 completed flights
Avg delay
112 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.14%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.9%
Every carrier on SFO to SBP, 1,144 flights
These figures cover 963 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% 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
SkyWest against every carrier on SFO to SBP
SkyWest flew 963 of the 1,144 flights on SFO to SBP, most of the route. Its 75.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 74.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 75.6% to United at 70.9%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 (this page) | 963 | 75.6% | 112 min | 1.14% | B |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 181 | 70.9% | 54 min | 0.55% | C+ |
Departure window
When SkyWest 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 963 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am176 flights71.0%
- 11am–2pm188 flights71.3%
- 2pm–5pm157 flights75.5%
- 5pm–8pm193 flights80.9%
- 8pm–5am249 flights78.3%
Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 80.9% on time. The full set of windows spans 10 points.
Across the year
SkyWest on SFO to SBP through the year
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 66.7%. March is the strongest month at 85.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 19 points. October was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 67.4%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
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 26,000 reported delay minutes.
- 33%Carrier
- 28%National Airspace System
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 2.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 25,895 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.14% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.52%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.8% 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 62.3% on time across 965 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 963 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 SkyWest on SFO to SBP
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 963 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 75.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 947 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to SBP, every carrier
- SkyWest on SBP to SFO, the return leg
- United Airlines on SFO to SBP70.9%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.