Route reliability record
BUR→SLC
Burbank to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 1,484
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 574 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 13 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,484 BUR to SLC flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 962 at 92.3% on time.
Best time to fly BUR to SLC: a 5pm–8pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 97.0%, against 90.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 133 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,476 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.47%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
92.3% on time across 962 flights
These figures cover 1,484 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BUR to SLC
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 962 | 92.3% | 69 min | 0.52% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 394 | 92.1% | 172 min | 0.51% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 128 | 76.6% | 57 min | 0.00% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 92.3%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on BUR 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Burbank to Salt Lake City
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LGB → SLCLong Beach to Salt Lake City | SkyWest Airlines | 93.1% | 93.1% | 0.00% | 5am–8am, Tue | OO 3793 16:50 |
| 2. BUR → SLCBurbank to Salt Lake City | SkyWest Airlines | 91.8% | 92.3% | 0.52% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. BUR → SLCBurbank to Salt Lake City | Delta Air Lines | 91.6% | 92.1% | 0.51% | 5am–8am, Tue | DL 2582 07:00 |
| 4. ONT → SLCOntario to Salt Lake City | Delta Air Lines | 90.7% | 91.7% | 1.11% | 8am–11am, Wed | DL 2708 06:00 |
| 5. LAX → SLCLos Angeles to Salt Lake City | SkyWest Airlines | 89.6% | 89.6% | 0.00% | 11am–2pm, Mon | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 1,484 flights.
- 5am–8am364 flights93.9%
- 8am–11am338 flights94.0%
- 11am–2pm319 flights84.6%
- 2pm–5pm211 flights85.8%
- 5pm–8pm252 flights94.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 84.6% on time against 94.4% for 5pm–8pm. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,484 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 85.5%. January is the strongest month at 96.2%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 11 points. August was the busiest month here, with 140 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 97.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 87.0%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 46% of the 12,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 46%Carrier
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Extreme weather
- 9%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 22% 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 3.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 12,111 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 5,586 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.47%, below the national 1.81% 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 stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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.
The 574 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 86.0% on time across 1,484 flights, 5 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,484 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: this route's record is 90.9% on time with 0.47% cancelled, worth an A+. The largest single lever is the 5pm–8pm departure window, and the numbers below the table are where the reasoning behind that lives. 1,476 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BUR to SLC questions
How often is BUR to SLC delayed?
Roughly one flight in ten arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 9.1% of the 1,484 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on BUR to SLC?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 92.3% on time across 962 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 92.1%, a gap of half a point. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BUR to SLC?
The 5pm–8pm departure window is the strongest at 94.4% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 84.6%, 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 October delays on BUR to SLC?
October is the weakest month at 85.5% on time, compared with 96.2% in January. Across the year that is 11 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 BUR — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on BUR to SLC92.3%
- Delta Air Lines on BUR to SLC92.1%
- Southwest Airlines on BUR to SLC76.6%
- BUR to LAS, a related route80.8%
- DEN to SLC, a related route77.5%
- BUR to PHX, a related route83.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record92.3%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record92.1%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record76.6%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. BUR to SLC and SLC to BUR are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed BUR to SLC’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.