Route reliability record
ABQ→SLC
Albuquerque to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 1,149
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 493 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A+. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 16 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,149 ABQ to SLC flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Best time to fly ABQ to SLC: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 97.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 95.2%, against 93.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 16 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 157 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
93.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,148 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
93.0% on time across 1,149 flights
These figures cover 1,149 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 12 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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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ABQ to SLC
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,149 | 93.0% | 66 min | 0.00% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on ABQ to SLC
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 10 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am127 flights97.6%
- 8am–11am239 flights95.8%
- 11am–2pm364 flights93.9%
- 2pm–5pm49 flights93.9%
- 5pm–8pm321 flights87.5%
- 8pm–5am49 flights95.9%
Scale runs 80% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 97.6% of the time, against 87.5% for the evening window. That is 10 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ABQ to SLC by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On ABQ to SLC, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 97.6% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 87.5%, a wide gap of 10.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am97.6%
- 8–11am95.8%
- 11am–2pm93.9%
- 2–5pm93.9%
- 5–8pm87.5%
- 8pm–5am95.9%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 13 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
September is the best month on the calendar at 97.8% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. July was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 95.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 89.9%, a spread of 5 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 74% of the 5,310 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 74%Carrier
- 21%Extreme weather
- 5%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 21% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 5,310 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 74%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,938 of the 5,310 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.1% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 493 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 91.5% on time across 1,149 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,149 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in SLC after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 97.8% on time and March 84.8%, a swing of 13 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,148 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ABQ to SLC questions
How often is ABQ to SLC delayed?
About one flight in fifteen arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 7.0% of the 1,149 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ABQ to SLC compared with the rest of the country?
93.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 16 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ABQ to SLC?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 97.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 87.5%, 10 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are March delays on ABQ to SLC?
March is the weakest month at 84.8% on time, compared with 97.8% in September. Across the year that is 13 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- SLC to ABQ — the return legseparate record
- Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ) delay statistics
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- ABQ to PHX, a related route81.8%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- ABQ to DEN, a related route82.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record93.0%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. ABQ to SLC and SLC to ABQ are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.