PlainFlights

SFO vs IAD - 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
SFO

San Francisco, CA

San Francisco, California

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Airport B
IAD

Washington, DC

Washington, Virginia

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Key Performance Metrics

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

Metric SFO IAD
On-Time Rate (higher is better) 81.0% 84.1%
Avg Delay (lower is better) 72.5 min 81.3 min
Delay Rate (lower is better) 19.0% 15.9%
Cancellation Rate (lower is better) 0.85% 1.05%
Total Flights 1,466,784 618,145
Delayed Flights 278,538 98,139
Cancelled Flights 12,405 6,473
Top Delay Cause Late Aircraft Carrier

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

Delay Cause Breakdown

SFO - San Francisco, CA

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

IAD - Washington, DC

Carrier 37.9%
Late Aircraft 30.2%
NAS 22.4%
Weather 9.5%
Security 0.1%

Top Routes

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%

Top routes from IAD

Route Flights On-Time
IAD → ATL
Atlanta
20,387 84.2%
ATL → IAD
Washington
20,375 84%
DEN → IAD
Washington
17,394 79.1%
IAD → DEN
Denver
17,372 83.1%
CLT → IAD
Washington
13,324 83.6%
IAD → CLT
Charlotte
13,287 83.5%

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.