Carrier route record
UASFO→SBP
United Airlines · San Francisco to San Luis Obispo
- Flights
- 181
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- 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 SBP sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 55 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 181 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so United on SFO to SBP runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 67 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 179 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.9%
Every carrier on SFO to SBP, 1,144 flights
These figures cover 181 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% 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
United against every carrier on SFO to SBP
United flew 181 of the 1,144 flights on SFO to SBP, about 16% of it. Its 70.9% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 75.6% to United at 70.9%.
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 Airlines (this page)thin sample | 181 | 70.9% | 54 min | 0.55% | C+ |
Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 36 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–11am41 flights78.0%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm30 flights66.7%
- 5pm–8pm66 flights83.3%
- 8pm–5am44 flights47.6%
Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 47.6% on time, against 83.3% for the 5pm–8pm slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 66 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on SFO to SBP through the year
- Jan–Mar 202643 flights90.7%
- Apr–Jun 2026138 flights64.7%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 70.9% on time across 181 flights.
Split by quarter, United on SFO to SBP logged 43 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 138 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 70.9% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 75% of the 2,810 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.
- 75%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 4%National Airspace System
75% 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 2,810 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 75 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 2,810 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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 60.7% on time across 180 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 181 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 SBP
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 181 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 70.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 179 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to SBP, every carrier
- United on SBP to SFO, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on SFO to SBP75.6%
- 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 7.04 million flight records
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.