Route reliability record
CVG→SLC
Cincinnati to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 817
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,450 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 817 CVG to SLC flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly CVG to SLC: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 88.4%, against 85.5% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 82 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 812 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.49%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
85.5% on time across 817 flights
These figures cover 817 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 CVG 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 817 | 85.5% | 68 min | 0.49% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on CVG 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 14 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am183 flights92.3%
- 8am–11am179 flights89.3%
- 11am–2pm120 flights90.8%
- 2pm–5pm12 flights—
- 5pm–8pm81 flights78.8%
- 8pm–5am242 flights78.4%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.3% of the time, against 78.4% for the overnight window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 242 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CVG 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 CVG to SLC, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.3% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 78.4%, a wide gap of 13.9 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.3%
- 8–11am89.3%
- 11am–2pm90.8%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm78.8%
- 8pm–5am78.4%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
December is the weak month at 73.1% on time, against 95.7% in January. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. May was the busiest month here, with 87 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 82.5%, a spread of 6 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 51% of the 8,064 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,087 of the 8,064 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 8,064 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.3% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.49%, 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 stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.3% 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.
The 1,450 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 88.6% on time across 816 flights, 3 points above 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 817 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in SLC after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 817 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 85.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 812 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CVG to SLC questions
How often is CVG to SLC delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.5% of the 817 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is CVG to SLC compared with the rest of the country?
85.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CVG to SLC?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 78.4%, 14 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 December delays on CVG to SLC?
December is the weakest month at 73.1% on time, compared with 95.7% in January. Across the year that is 23 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 CVG — the return legseparate record
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- CVG to ORD, a related route70.8%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- CVG to ATL, a related route85.4%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record85.5%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. CVG to SLC and SLC to CVG 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.