Route reliability record
FCA→SLC
Kalispell to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 1,125
- Period
- September 2025 to August 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 12 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 1,125 FCA to SLC flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 678 at 91.2% on time.
Best time to fly FCA to SLC: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.3% of the time and Saturday flights 91.6%, against 89.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 121 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,113 completed flights
Avg delay
106 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.89%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
91.2% on time across 678 flights
These figures cover 1,125 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 FCA to SLC
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 678 | 91.2% | 91 min | 1.18% | A |
| Delta Air Lines | 447 | 86.7% | 122 min | 0.45% | A+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 91.2%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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.
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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 | 90.1% | 91.2% | 1.18% | 11am–2pm, Tue | OO 3798 18:10 |
| 2. FCA → SLCKalispell to Salt Lake City | Delta Air Lines | 86.3% | 86.7% | 0.45% | 5am–8am, 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 1,125 flights.
- 5am–8am349 flights87.0%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm432 flights91.3%
- 2pm–5pm19 flights—
- 5pm–8pm325 flights89.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 11am–2pm window is the strongest at 91.3% on time. The full set of windows spans 4 points.
Explore
Filter FCA 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 FCA to SLC, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 91.3% on time and the worst is 5am–8am at 87.0%, a narrow gap of 4.3 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am87.0%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm91.3%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm89.7%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. 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 82.6% on time, 14 points below September, the best at 96.7%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 119 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 91.6% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 85.6%, a spread of 6 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 77% of the 13,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 77%Carrier
- 14%Extreme weather
- 6%National Airspace System
- 2%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 12,561 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 77%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 9,705 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.89%, 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 4.0% 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 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.
The return leg runs 88.6% on time across 1,125 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 1,125 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. September runs 96.7% on time and August 82.6%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,113 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 nine arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 10.6% of the 1,125 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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 91.2% on time across 678 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 86.7%, a gap of 5 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 91.3% on time. The 5am–8am window is the weakest at 87.0%, 4 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 FCA to SLC?
August is the weakest month at 82.6% on time, compared with 96.7% in September. 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 FCA — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on FCA to SLC91.2%
- Delta Air Lines on FCA to SLC86.7%
- FCA to DEN, a related route84.6%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- PHX to SLC, a related route83.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record91.2%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record86.7%
- Flying to ski country: which routes into the mountains run on time
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.