Simply Flying recently published a list of United’s top 10 busiest routes from San Francisco International Airport (SFO) based on planned flights in January 2025:
| Ranking | Route | Number of Flights |
| 1 | SFO – Denver (DEN) | 302 |
| 2 | SFO – Newark (EWR) | 285 |
| 3 | SFO – Los Angeles (LAX) | 281 |
| 4 | SFO – Chicago (ORD) | 254 |
| 5 | SFO – Houston (IAH) | 238 |
| 6 | SFO – Las Vegas (LAS) | 201 |
| 7 | SFO – Washington, D.C. (IAD) | 187 |
| 8 | SFO – San Diego (SAN) | 184 |
| 9 | SFO – Burbank (BUR) | 175 |
| 10 | SFO – Seattle (SEA) | 160 |
While the number one route is clearly San Francisco to Denver, I’d argue that United’s top destination is from San Francisco to Los Angeles, with a total of 456 flights from San Francisco to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and Hollywood Burbank Airport (BUR) combined.
If you don’t know Los Angeles geography that well, while Burbank is its own city, Burbank is a part of Los Angeles County. For a lot of Los Angeles residents, including myself, Burbank’s Hollywood Burbank Airport is much easier and cheaper to get to than LAX (and with “Hollywood” in Burbank airport’s name, those in charge of the Hollywood Burbank Airport clearly want you to know that you’re essentially flying into Hollywood).
As a reference point, I live in the Hollywood Hills and right now, an UberX to BUR would cost $39.54 and take 23 minutes, compared to $67.65 and 51 minutes for an UberX to LAX. In fact, I’m flying Tahiti to SFO to Los Angeles in three weeks and decided to fly from SFO to Burbank instead of SFO to LAX, even though flying into Burbank means that I’ll land about an hour later (for me, it’s worth it just to avoid the LAX traffic, a longer drive, and higher Uber fares).
So while Denver is currently United’s top domestic route from SFO, I think it’s clear that Los Angeles is United’s top domestic destination.
4 comments
The combination of LAX & BUR is huge!
Looking forward to your Tahiti review!
Thanks! I can’t wait to write about it (checking out the new Westin there).
I’m more surprised by Las Vegas and Seattle since those are both big hubs for other airlines.
San Francisco to Seattle makes sense to me since I’m sure there are a ton of tech-related business flights (and also, having lived in San Francisco for almost a decade, a lot of people in SF used to live in Seattle and vice versa, so you’ve got a lot of people going back to see friends who wouldn’t otherwise be loyal to Alaska, Delta, etc.). With Vegas, not surprised either since Bay Area folks like to party and, similarly, would try to take those flight on their preferred airline. In my experience, United pretty much has a tight hold on SFO-based flyers who value status, with Alaska a distant second.