Route reliability record
FAT→SLC
Fresno to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 1,365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 501 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A+. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 16 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,365 FAT to SLC flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Best time to fly FAT to SLC: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 95.9%, against 93.3% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 16 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 160 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
93.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,355 completed flights
Avg delay
84 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.51%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
93.3% on time across 1,365 flights
These figures cover 1,365 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on FAT 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,365 | 93.3% | 84 min | 0.51% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on FAT 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.
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
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 1,365 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights95.9%
- 8am–11am290 flights95.5%
- 11am–2pm365 flights92.6%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm345 flights89.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 95.9% on time for the 5am–8am window against 89.5% for 5pm–8pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter FAT 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 FAT to SLC, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 95.9% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 89.5%, a real gap of 6.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am95.9%
- 8–11am95.5%
- 11am–2pm92.6%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm89.5%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 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.
August is the worst month at 83.1% on time, 14 points below April, the best at 97.4%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 95.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 90.6%, a spread of 5 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 75% of the 7,613 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 75%Carrier
- 23%Extreme weather
- 2%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 23% 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 3.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 7,613 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 75%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,732 of the 7,613 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.51%, 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 2.3% 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 501 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 93.1% on time across 1,365 flights, within half a point 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 1,365 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. April runs 97.4% on time and August 83.1%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,355 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FAT to SLC questions
How often is FAT to SLC delayed?
About one flight in fifteen arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 6.7% of the 1,365 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is FAT to SLC compared with the rest of the country?
93.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 16 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on FAT to SLC?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 89.5%, 6 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 August delays on FAT to SLC?
August is the weakest month at 83.1% on time, compared with 97.4% in April. Across the year that is 14 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 FAT — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- FAT to SAN, a related route73.2%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- FAT to LAS, a related route81.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record93.3%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. FAT to SLC and SLC to FAT 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.