Route reliability record
IDA→SLC
Idaho Falls to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 1,195
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 189 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 15 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 1,195 IDA to SLC flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly IDA to SLC: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 94.2%, against 91.8% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 15 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 145 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,190 completed flights
Avg delay
109 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.42%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
92.6% on time across 878 flights
These figures cover 1,195 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on IDA 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 | 878 | 92.6% | 77 min | 0.11% | A+ |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 317 | 89.8% | 175 min | 1.26% | A |
Flight by flight
Flights on IDA 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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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 1,195 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights91.1%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm362 flights93.9%
- 2pm–5pm127 flights90.6%
- 5pm–8pm341 flights90.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The time of day barely matters here. The 11am–2pm window tops the set at 93.9% and 2pm–5pm sits at 90.6%, 3 points apart across 1,195 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.
Explore
Filter IDA 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 IDA to SLC, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 93.9% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 90.6%, a narrow gap of 3.3 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am91.1%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm93.9%
- 2–5pm90.6%
- 5–8pm90.9%
- 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.
November is the best month on the calendar at 100.0% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. August was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 94.2% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 88.8%, a spread of 5 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 75% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 75%Carrier
- 19%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 19% 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 3.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 10,585 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 75%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 7,932 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.42%, 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 3.9% 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 189 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 89.6% on time across 1,195 flights, within 2 points 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 1,195 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. November runs 100.0% on time and May 86.4%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 1,190 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
IDA to SLC questions
How often is IDA 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 8.2% of the 1,195 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is IDA to SLC compared with the rest of the country?
91.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 15 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on IDA to SLC?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 93.9% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 90.6%, 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 May delays on IDA to SLC?
May is the weakest month at 86.4% on time, compared with 100.0% in November. 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 IDA — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on IDA to SLC92.6%
- Delta Air Lines on IDA to SLC89.8%
- IDA to DEN, a related route81.1%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- PHX to SLC, a related route83.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record92.6%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record89.8%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. IDA to SLC and SLC to IDA 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.