Route reliability record
TUS→SFO
Tucson to San Francisco
- Flights
- 945
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 751 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route draws a C+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 945 TUS to SFO flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
Best time to fly TUS to SFO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.1% of the time and Saturday flights 77.9%, against 66.4% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 109 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 938 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.42%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
66.2% on time across 883 flights
These figures cover 945 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.2% 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 TUS to SFO
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 62 | 68.9% | 76 min | 1.61% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 883 | 66.2% | 66 min | 0.34% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on TUS to SFO
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 47 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am229 flights81.1%
- 8am–11am174 flights33.9%
- 11am–2pm250 flights78.6%
- 2pm–5pm128 flights59.8%
- 5pm–8pm123 flights64.2%
- 8pm–5am41 flights75.6%
Scale runs 25% to 85%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 81.1% of the time, against 33.9% for the morning window. That is 47 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 250 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter TUS to SFO 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 TUS to SFO, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 81.1% on time and the worst is 8am–11am at 33.9%, a wide gap of 47.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am81.1%
- 8–11am33.9%
- 11am–2pm78.6%
- 2–5pm59.8%
- 5–8pm64.2%
- 8pm–5am75.6%
best all US flightsScale 25% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 53 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 35.0% on time, 53 points below September, the best at 88.3%. 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 119 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 77.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 54.7%, a spread of 23 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
National Airspace System accounts for 67% of the 21,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 67%National Airspace System
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
67% 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 14,000 minutes out of 21,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 20,884 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.42%, 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
12.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
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 75.9% on time across 944 flights, 10 points above 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. 945 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 SFO after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 945 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 66.4% 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
TUS to SFO questions
How often is TUS to SFO delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 33.6% of the 945 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is TUS to SFO compared with the rest of the country?
66.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 11 points against it. That is worth a C+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on TUS to SFO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 81.1% on time. The 8am–11am window is the weakest at 33.9%, 47 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 TUS to SFO?
June is the weakest month at 35.0% on time, compared with 88.3% in September. Across the year that is 53 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
- SFO to TUS — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- TUS to PHX, a related route83.6%
- LAX to SFO, a related route60.1%
- TUS to DEN, a related route83.9%
- United Airlines on-time record68.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record66.2%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. TUS to SFO and SFO to TUS 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.