Route reliability record
SFO→TUS
San Francisco to Tucson
- Flights
- 944
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 751 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 944 SFO to TUS flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly SFO to TUS: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 80.6% of the time and Saturday flights 83.7%, against 75.9% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
75.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 938 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.32%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
76.0% on time across 881 flights
These figures cover 944 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% 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 TUS
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 | 881 | 76.0% | 67 min | 0.34% | B+ |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 63 | 74.6% | 49 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on SFO to TUS
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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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–11am252 flights80.6%
- 11am–2pm150 flights73.3%
- 2pm–5pm161 flights76.7%
- 5pm–8pm217 flights78.6%
- 8pm–5am164 flights66.7%
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 80.6% of the time, against 66.7% for the overnight window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 252 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SFO to TUS 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 TUS, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 80.6% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 66.7%, a wide gap of 13.9 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am80.6%
- 11am–2pm73.3%
- 2–5pm76.7%
- 5–8pm78.6%
- 8pm–5am66.7%
best all US flightsScale 60% 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 55.6% on time, 30 points below March, the best at 86.1%. 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. November was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 83.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 70.1%, a spread of 14 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 15,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%National Airspace System
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
34% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 to one. The split is drawn from 14,924 reported delay minutes.
41% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 6,192 minutes out of 15,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.32%, below the national 1.89% 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 actually costs
8.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 751 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 66.4% on time across 945 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. 944 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in TUS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 944 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 75.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 938 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to TUS questions
How often is SFO to TUS 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 24.1% of the 944 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is SFO to TUS compared with the rest of the country?
75.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of about a point against it. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SFO to TUS?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 80.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 66.7%, 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 TUS?
August is the weakest month at 55.6% on time, compared with 86.1% 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
- TUS to SFO — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- SFO to LAX, a related route70.9%
- PHX to TUS, a related route81.0%
- SFO to SEA, a related route72.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record76.0%
- United Airlines on-time record74.6%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. SFO to TUS and TUS 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.