Carrier route record

UALAX→SLC

United Airlines · Los Angeles to Salt Lake City

Flights: 149
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 4%
Carriers: 6

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.

United on LAX to SLC 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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 149 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 2,457 at 88.4% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, United's LAX to SLC record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 113 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 149 completed flights

Avg delay

65 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

87.2%

Every carrier on LAX to SLC, 4,195 flights

These figures cover 149 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 12 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

United against every carrier on LAX to SLC

United flew 149 of the 4,195 flights on LAX to SLC, about 4% of it. Its 88.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 87.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 90.9% to Southwest at 79.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 88.4% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 79.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 371 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on LAX to SLC
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	23	90.9%	29 min	4.35%	A−
United Airlines (this page)thin sample	149	88.6%	65 min	0.00%	A+
Delta Air Lines	2,457	88.4%	80 min	0.53%	A+
SkyWest Airlines	720	88.0%	69 min	0.00%	A+
Frontier Airlines	475	85.3%	75 min	1.26%	A
Southwest Airlines	371	79.7%	47 min	0.27%	B+

Delta leads Southwest by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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Departure window

When United runs best on this route

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 149 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split United's LAX to SLC record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 88.6% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

United on LAX to SLC through the year

Oct–Dec 202514 flights—
Jan–Mar 202685 flights90.6%
Apr–Jun 202650 flights96.0%

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 88.6% on time across 149 flights.

Split by quarter, United on LAX to SLC logged 14 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 85 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 50 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 88.6% annual figure is the one to use.

Arrival by arrival

How late United on LAX to SLC runs when it is late

United on LAX to SLC often beats the schedule: 65 of 149 completed flights, 44%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 17 late arrivals split 2 under half an hour, 8 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 7 an hour or more.

15+ min early65 flights43.6%
Within 15 min67 flights45.0%
15–29 min late2 flights1.3%
30–59 min late8 flights5.4%
1–2 hours late5 flights3.4%
2+ hours late2 flights1.3%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 149 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

6 of 23 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 26% of them. No flight that left on time arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for United on LAX to SLC

The latest arrival of the period was on 13 January 2026, 3 hours 1 minute behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in January 2026.

The latest arrivals of United on LAX to SLC in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
13 January 2026	3 hours 1 minute	Carrier
28 December 2025	2 hours 46 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
26 December 2025	1 hour 37 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
12 January 2026	1 hour 37 minutes	Carrier
23 January 2026	1 hour 8 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why United runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 1,110 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
56%
Carrier
44%

56% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 1,110 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 56 to one. The split is drawn from 1,110 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 484 of the 1,110 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% 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 590 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 91.9% on time across 148 flights, 3 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 3 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 149 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.

What to do with this

Booking United on LAX to SLC

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 149 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 88.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 149 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures