Carrier route record
UASFO→SNA
United Airlines · San Francisco to Santa Ana
- Flights
- 1,011
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 21%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on SFO to SNA lands a B+, 6 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 roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,011 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's SFO to SNA record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 63 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,004 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.49%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.3%
Every carrier on SFO to SNA, 4,726 flights
These figures cover 1,011 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 SNA
United flew 1,011 of the 4,726 flights on SFO to SNA, about 21% of it. Its 83.9% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 87.8% to Frontier at 73.6%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 49 | 87.8% | 71 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,011 | 83.9% | 51 min | 0.49% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 3,521 | 79.4% | 60 min | 1.42% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 145 | 73.6% | 85 min | 0.69% | C+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on SFO to SNA
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 14 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–8am5 flights—
- 8am–11am309 flights82.8%
- 11am–2pm151 flights80.0%
- 2pm–5pm171 flights76.0%
- 5pm–8pm375 flights89.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 89.5% on time. The full set of windows spans 14 points.
Across the year
United on SFO to SNA through the year
June is the worst month at 75.6% on time, 15 points below September, the best at 91.0%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 89.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.9%. 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 46% of the 8,289 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
46% 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 8,289 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 8,289 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.49%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.3% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 372 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 68.1% on time across 1,011 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,011 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 SNA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,011 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 83.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,004 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to SNA, every carrier
- United on SNA to SFO, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on SFO to SNA79.4%
- Frontier Airlines on SFO to SNA73.6%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- John Wayne Airport (SNA) 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.