Route reliability record
HLN→SLC
Helena to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 725
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 402 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 18 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 725 HLN to SLC flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 18 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 181 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
95.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 723 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.28%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
95.4% on time across 725 flights
These figures cover 725 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on HLN 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 | 725 | 95.4% | 62 min | 0.28% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on HLN 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 725 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights97.8%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm360 flights93.0%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 97.8% on time for the 5am–8am window against 93.0% for 11am–2pm. 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 HLN 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 HLN to SLC, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 97.8% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 93.0%, a narrow gap of 4.8 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am97.8%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm93.0%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm—
- 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
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 725 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
July is the worst month at 90.3% on time, 10 points below May, the best at 100.0%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 99.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 90.4%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 80% of the 2,050 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 80%Carrier
- 16%Extreme weather
- 4%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,050 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 80%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,647 of the 2,050 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.28%, 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 1.4% 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.
At 402 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 95.2% on time across 725 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 725 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in SLC after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 725 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 95.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 723 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
HLN to SLC questions
How often is HLN to SLC delayed?
Roughly 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 4.6% of the 725 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is HLN to SLC compared with the rest of the country?
95.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 18 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on HLN to SLC?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 97.8% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 93.0%, 5 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 July delays on HLN to SLC?
July is the weakest month at 90.3% on time, compared with 100.0% in May. Across the year that is 10 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 HLN — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- HLN to DEN, a related route84.0%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- PHX to SLC, a related route83.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record95.4%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. HLN to SLC and SLC to HLN are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed HLN to SLC’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.