PlainFlights

SBA 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
SBA

Santa Barbara, CA

Santa Barbara, 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 SBA SFO
On-Time Rate (higher is better) 83.3% 81.0%
Avg Delay (lower is better) 78.6 min 72.5 min
Delay Rate (lower is better) 16.7% 19.0%
Cancellation Rate (lower is better) 1.01% 0.85%
Total Flights 83,263 1,466,784
Delayed Flights 13,934 278,538
Cancelled Flights 843 12,405
Top Delay Cause Late Aircraft Late Aircraft

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

Delay Cause Breakdown

SBA - Santa Barbara, CA

Late Aircraft 41.2%
Carrier 32.9%
NAS 20.1%
Weather 5.6%
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 SBA

Route Flights On-Time
SFO → SBA
Santa Barbara
7,387 86%
SBA → SFO
San Francisco
7,381 79.2%
PHX → SBA
Santa Barbara
6,831 83.3%
SBA → PHX
Phoenix
6,831 85.7%
DEN → SBA
Santa Barbara
6,705 78.3%
SBA → DEN
Denver
6,705 84.5%

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.