Route reliability record
FCA→SLC
Kalispell to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 1,159
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 532 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 14 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 1,159 FCA to SLC flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 747 at 93.8% on time.
Best time to fly FCA to SLC: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.1% of the time and Saturday flights 97.3%, against 91.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 140 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,148 completed flights
Avg delay
111 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.86%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
93.8% on time across 747 flights
These figures cover 1,159 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 FCA to SLC
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 93.8% of the time; Delta Air Lines manages 87.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 412 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 747 | 93.8% | 84 min | 1.07% | A |
| Delta Air Lines | 412 | 87.8% | 137 min | 0.49% | A+ |
SkyWest leads Delta by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on FCA 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Kalispell to Salt Lake City
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. FCA → SLCKalispell to Salt Lake City | SkyWest Airlines | 92.8% | 93.8% | 1.07% | 11am–2pm, Sat | OO 3801 12:00 |
| 2. FCA → SLCKalispell to Salt Lake City | Delta Air Lines | 87.4% | 87.8% | 0.49% | 11am–2pm, Sat | DL 2201 05:20 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 1,159 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights87.6%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm445 flights94.1%
- 2pm–5pm3 flights—
- 5pm–8pm346 flights92.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 94.1% on time, ahead of 5am–8am at 87.6%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 445 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 13 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.
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 84.1%. July is the strongest month at 97.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 13 points. June was the busiest month here, with 119 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 97.3% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 87.1%. 10 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 77% of the 11,000 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.
- 77%Carrier
- 15%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
- 1%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 10,681 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 77%, 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 8,198 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.86%, 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 3.0% 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 532 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 90.5% on time across 1,159 flights, within about 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 1,159 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. July runs 97.5% on time and May 84.1%, a swing of 13 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 1,148 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FCA to SLC questions
How often is FCA to SLC delayed?
About one flight in twelve arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 8.4% of the 1,159 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
Which airline is most reliable on FCA to SLC?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 93.8% on time across 747 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 87.8%, a gap of 6 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on FCA to SLC?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 94.1% on time. The 5am–8am window is the weakest at 87.6%, 7 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 May delays on FCA to SLC?
May is the weakest month at 84.1% on time, compared with 97.5% in July. Across the year that is 13 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 FCA — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on FCA to SLC93.8%
- Delta Air Lines on FCA to SLC87.8%
- FCA to DEN, a related route83.9%
- DEN to SLC, a related route77.5%
- PHX to SLC, a related route83.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record93.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record87.8%
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
Direction matters. FCA to SLC and SLC to FCA 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.