Route reliability record
FAT→SLC
Fresno to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 1,369
- Period
- July 2025 to June 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 17 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 1,369 FAT to SLC flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Best time to fly FAT to SLC: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 96.0%, against 95.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 17 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 174 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
95.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,362 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.51%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
95.0% on time across 1,369 flights
These figures cover 1,369 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 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 | 1,369 | 95.0% | 86 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.
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 1,369 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights96.7%
- 8am–11am298 flights95.6%
- 11am–2pm365 flights93.7%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm341 flights94.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The time of day barely matters here. The 5am–8am window tops the set at 96.7% and 11am–2pm sits at 93.7%, 3 points apart across 1,369 flights. Pick the departure that suits the trip: whatever is going wrong here is not accumulating over the course of the day. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,369 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
January is the weak month at 91.1% on time, against 97.5% in August. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 123 flights.
The day of the week is close to irrelevant here: 3 points separates the best day from the worst. Weekly demand peaks are not what drives the delays on this operation.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 78% of the 5,855 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.
- 78%Carrier
- 21%Extreme weather
- 1%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 21% 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 3.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 5,855 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 78%, 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 4,553 of the 5,855 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.51%, 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 1.8% 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 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. 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 runs 94.3% on time across 1,369 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 1,369 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: there is no lever worth pulling here. Departure windows span 3 points, carriers span half a point, and the calendar spans 6 points. Book on price and schedule, and plan around the 95.0% base rate rather than trying to beat it. 1,362 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 twenty arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 5.0% of the 1,369 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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?
95.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 17 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 96.7% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 93.7%, 3 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 January delays on FAT to SLC?
January is the weakest month at 91.1% on time, compared with 97.5% in August. Across the year that is 6 points between the best and worst months. The seasonal swing is modest enough that it should not decide when you travel.
Related
Where to go next
- SLC to FAT — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- FAT to SAN, a related route76.2%
- DEN to SLC, a related route77.5%
- FAT to LAS, a related route82.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record95.0%
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.