Route reliability record
TUS→SFO
Tucson to San Francisco
- Flights
- 966
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 751 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 966 TUS to SFO flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly TUS to SFO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 80.2%, against 71.7% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 59 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 959 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.41%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
71.9% on time across 904 flights
These figures cover 966 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.8% 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
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 904 | 71.9% | 70 min | 0.33% | C+ |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 62 | 68.9% | 76 min | 1.61% | 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.
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 46 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–8am270 flights84.4%
- 8am–11am133 flights38.3%
- 11am–2pm291 flights81.3%
- 2pm–5pm75 flights54.1%
- 5pm–8pm156 flights68.0%
- 8pm–5am41 flights75.6%
Scale runs 30% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 84.4% of the time, against 38.3% for the morning window. That is 46 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 291 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 60 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, 60 points below August, the best at 94.7%. 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 62.1%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 62% of the 19,000 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.
- 62%National Airspace System
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
62% 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 12,000 minutes out of 19,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 19,191 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.41%, 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.8% 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.
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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.7% on time across 966 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 966 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. 966 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 71.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 959 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TUS to SFO questions
How often is TUS to SFO delayed?
Roughly 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 28.3% of the 966 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is TUS to SFO compared with the rest of the country?
71.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 6 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 84.4% on time. The 8am–11am window is the weakest at 38.3%, 46 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 94.7% in August. Across the year that is 60 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 route83.8%
- LAX to SFO, a related route64.8%
- TUS to DEN, a related route82.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record71.9%
- United Airlines on-time record68.9%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.