Route reliability record
BZN→SLC
Bozeman to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 1,158
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 347 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 1,158 BZN to SLC flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 654 at 91.9% on time.
Best time to fly BZN to SLC: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 92.9%, against 90.4% 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 128 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,151 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.60%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
91.9% on time across 654 flights
These figures cover 1,158 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 BZN to SLC
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 654 | 91.9% | 77 min | 0.46% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 504 | 88.4% | 97 min | 0.79% | A+ |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 91.9%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on BZN 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 Bozeman to Salt Lake City
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BZN → SLCBozeman to Salt Lake City | Delta Air Lines | 91.5% | 91.9% | 0.46% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. BZN → SLCBozeman to Salt Lake City | SkyWest Airlines | 87.7% | 88.4% | 0.79% | 11am–2pm, Tue | OO 3676 18:30 |
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 1,158 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights94.5%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm365 flights89.8%
- 2pm–5pm96 flights93.8%
- 5pm–8pm332 flights85.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.5% of the time, against 85.4% for the evening window. That is 9 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
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 96.7% 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 119 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 92.9% on time and Saturday the weakest at 87.8%. 5 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 48% of the 9,690 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.
- 48%Carrier
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 20% 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 3.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 9,690 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, 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 4,688 of the 9,690 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.60%, 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 2.9% 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.
At 347 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 87.7% on time across 1,158 flights, within 3 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 1,158 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 96.7% on time and March 83.7%, a swing of 13 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,151 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BZN to SLC questions
How often is BZN to SLC delayed?
About 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 9.6% of the 1,158 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 BZN to SLC?
Delta Air Lines leads at 91.9% on time across 654 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 88.4%, a gap of 4 points. 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 BZN to SLC?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 85.4%, 9 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 BZN to SLC?
March is the weakest month at 83.7% on time, compared with 96.7% 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 BZN — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on BZN to SLC91.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on BZN to SLC88.4%
- BZN to DEN, a related route76.9%
- DEN to SLC, a related route77.5%
- BZN to SEA, a related route84.4%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record91.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record88.4%
- 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. BZN to SLC and SLC to BZN 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.