Flight number record
DL 1161
Delta Air Lines · Salt Lake City to Los Angeles
- Route
- SLC → LAX
- Departs
- 17:10
- Flights
- 356
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1161, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1161 lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 356 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 1161's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 41 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 354 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.56%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
5.4%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 356 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Schedule
When DL 1161 flies
DL 1161 flies SLC to LAX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:10, used on 116 of 356 flights, with 17:15 (91 flights) and 17:45 (47 flights) next.
- Departs 17:10116 flights32.6%
- Departs 17:1591 flights25.6%
- Departs 17:4547 flights13.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 17:10 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 1161 runs 13 points better at 81.4%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
DL 1161 next to SLC to LAX
Every carrier on SLC to LAX combined arrived on time 85.6% of the time across 4,196 flights, so DL 1161 is 4 points behind it. Delta flew 2,459 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.5% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, close to this flight's figure.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1161thin sample | 356 | 81.4% | 57 min | 0.56% | B+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on SLC–LAX | 2,459 | 83.5% | 52 min | 0.53% | B+ |
| All carriers on SLC–LAX | 4,196 | 85.6% | 55 min | 0.48% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1161 quarter by quarter
DL 1161 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 87.6% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 72.6%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 89 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
- Jul–Sep 202522 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights82.2%
- Jan–Mar 202689 flights87.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights80.2%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights72.6%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 1161 did best on Wednesday at 92.0% on time and worst on Sunday at 76.5%. Each day rests on about 51 flights, so a gap of 16 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1161 runs when it is late
DL 1161 often beats the schedule: 99 of 354 completed flights, 28%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 66 late arrivals split 28 under half an hour, 19 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 19 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early99 flights28.0%
- Within 15 min189 flights53.4%
- 15–29 min late28 flights7.9%
- 30–59 min late19 flights5.4%
- 1–2 hours late9 flights2.5%
- 2+ hours late10 flights2.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 354 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
19 of 69 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 28% of them. 16 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1161
The latest arrival of the period was on 17 July 2026, 4 hours 16 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 17 July 2026 | 4 hours 16 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 October 2025 | 3 hours 48 minutes | Carrier |
| 30 November 2025 | 3 hours 22 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 July 2026 | 3 hours 17 minutes | Carrier |
| 25 September 2025 | 2 hours 52 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why DL 1161 runs late
Carrier accounts for 53% of the 3,768 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,768 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 3,768 delay minutes reported on DL 1161.
Cancellations are rare at 0.56%, below the national 1.89% 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 routes
What a delay on this flight costs
5.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 590 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.
Every one of the 356 flights under DL 1161 in the data flew SLC to LAX. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 356 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.
What to do with this
Booking DL 1161
For a booking, read DL 1161 as 81.4% on time with 0.56% cancelled over 356 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- SLC to LAX, every carrier and departure
- LAX to SLC, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 829 on the same route86.5%
- Delta Air Lines 841 on the same route78.1%
- Delta Air Lines 1087 on the same route91.1%
- Delta Air Lines 1142 on the same route73.7%
- Delta Air Lines 1095 on the same route91.1%
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record
- Every Delta Air Lines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
A flight number here means Delta Air Lines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.