Route reliability record
CVG→SLC
Cincinnati to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 821
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,450 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 821 CVG to SLC flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly CVG to SLC: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 87.6%, against 83.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 61 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 815 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.61%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
83.7% on time across 821 flights
These figures cover 821 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 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 | 821 | 83.7% | 68 min | 0.61% | B+ |
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.
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 29 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am187 flights90.9%
- 8am–11am175 flights89.0%
- 11am–2pm95 flights88.4%
- 2pm–5pm48 flights61.7%
- 5pm–8pm58 flights78.9%
- 8pm–5am258 flights78.2%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.9% of the time, against 61.7% for the afternoon window. That is 29 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 258 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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.
July is the worst month at 69.0% on time, 27 points below January, the best at 95.7%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. May was the busiest month here, with 87 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 80.2%. 7 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 59% of the 9,079 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.
- 59%Carrier
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 59%, 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 5,325 of the 9,079 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,079 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.61%, 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 4.9% 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.
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. 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 88.1% on time across 820 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 821 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. 821 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 83.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 815 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 six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.3% of the 821 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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?
83.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 6 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ 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 90.9% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 61.7%, 29 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 July delays on CVG to SLC?
July is the weakest month at 69.0% on time, compared with 95.7% in January. Across the year that is 27 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 route70.2%
- DEN to SLC, a related route77.5%
- CVG to ATL, a related route86.4%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record83.7%
- 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. 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.
Embed CVG 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.