PlainFlights

SAN vs SFO - Airport Comparison

Select two airports to compare on-time performance, delays, cancellations, and top routes using U.S. Department of Transportation Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) data (2020–2025) across all 50 states. See our methodology for how metrics are computed.

Airport A
SAN

San Diego, CA

San Diego, California

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Airport B
SFO

San Francisco, CA

San Francisco, California

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Key Performance Metrics

BTS on-time performance data, 2020–2025 cumulative.

Metric SAN SFO
On-Time Rate (higher is better) 80.8% 81.0%
Avg Delay (lower is better) 64.8 min 72.5 min
Delay Rate (lower is better) 19.2% 19.0%
Cancellation Rate (lower is better) 0.97% 0.85%
Total Flights 973,807 1,466,784
Delayed Flights 186,727 278,538
Cancelled Flights 9,421 12,405
Top Delay Cause Late Aircraft Late Aircraft

✓ / ▲ indicates the more favorable value. Data: BTS On-Time Performance, 2020–2025.

Delay Cause Breakdown

SAN - San Diego, CA

Late Aircraft 46.4%
Carrier 28.6%
NAS 20.9%
Weather 3.9%
Security 0.2%

SFO - San Francisco, CA

Late Aircraft 42.0%
Carrier 36.9%
NAS 17.9%
Weather 3.2%
Security 0.1%

Top Routes

Top routes from SAN

Route Flights On-Time
SAN → SFO
San Francisco
34,589 77.3%
SFO → SAN
San Diego
34,477 80.3%
LAS → SAN
San Diego
33,593 72.8%
SAN → LAS
Las Vegas
33,400 77.7%
SJC → SAN
San Diego
31,755 82.2%
SAN → SJC
San Jose
31,496 82%

Top routes from SFO

Route Flights On-Time
LAX → SFO
San Francisco
63,553 78.7%
SFO → LAX
Los Angeles
63,540 82.9%
SFO → SEA
Seattle
37,671 82.1%
SEA → SFO
San Francisco
37,651 79.1%
JFK → SFO
San Francisco
35,481 81.9%
SFO → JFK
New York
35,481 83.2%

Source: Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), On-Time Performance Data (2020–2025) Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), On-Time Performance Data (2020–2025) On-time rates exclude cancelled and diverted flights. PlainFlights is not affiliated with BTS or the DOT

Every figure on PlainFlights is rendered directly from BTS On-Time Performance data, no number is typed in by an editor. This tool queries live on-time, delay, and cancellation figures for the two selected airports from the dataset. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.