Carrier route record
DLDFW→SLC
Delta Air Lines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 1,459
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 38%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on DFW to SLC lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 1,459 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's DFW to SLC record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 58 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,438 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.44%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
71.1%
Every carrier on DFW to SLC, 3,872 flights
These figures cover 1,459 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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
Delta against every carrier on DFW to SLC
Delta flew 1,459 of the 3,872 flights on DFW to SLC, about 38% of it. Its 83.1% on time is 12 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 71.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 84.8% to Envoy at 55.6%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 201 | 84.8% | 70 min | 1.99% | B |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,459 | 83.1% | 87 min | 1.44% | B |
| American Airlines | 2,203 | 61.7% | 65 min | 2.68% | D |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 9 | 55.6% | 37 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DFW to SLC
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 17 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am88 flights85.1%
- 8am–11am277 flights90.8%
- 11am–2pm363 flights85.2%
- 2pm–5pm365 flights83.7%
- 5pm–8pm365 flights74.3%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.8% of the time, against 74.3% for the evening window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on DFW to SLC through the year
June is the worst month at 74.8% on time, 17 points below January, the best at 92.0%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 125 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 86.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.4%, a spread of 9 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on DFW to SLC runs when it is late
Delta on DFW to SLC often beats the schedule: 450 of 1,438 completed flights, 31%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 243 late arrivals split 89 under half an hour, 65 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 89 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early450 flights31.3%
- Within 15 min745 flights51.8%
- 15–29 min late89 flights6.2%
- 30–59 min late65 flights4.5%
- 1–2 hours late41 flights2.9%
- 2+ hours late48 flights3.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,438 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
35 of 247 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. 31 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on DFW to SLC
The latest arrival of the period was on 10 May 2026, 17 hours 55 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 10 May 2026 | 17 hours 55 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 September 2025 | 16 hours 41 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 April 2026 | 15 hours 25 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 August 2026 | 13 hours 51 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 May 2026 | 8 hours 32 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 48% of the 21,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%Carrier
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 22 to one. The split is drawn from 21,061 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 10,000 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.44% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 989 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 runs 81.6% on time across 1,458 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 1,459 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.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on DFW to SLC
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 92.0% on time and June 74.8%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,438 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to SLC, every carrier
- Delta on SLC to DFW, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to SLC84.8%
- American Airlines on DFW to SLC61.7%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.