Route reliability record
LGB→SLC
Long Beach to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 1,552
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 588 mi
- Carriers
- 3
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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,552 LGB to SLC flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 622 at 93.1% on time.
Best time to fly LGB to SLC: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.0% of the time and Saturday flights 91.4%, against 89.1% for the route overall.
SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 93.1% on time across 622 flights.
Key figures
On time
89.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,544 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.32%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
93.1% on time across 622 flights
These figures cover 1,552 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 LGB to SLC
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 93.1% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 86.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 463 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 622 | 93.1% | 87 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 467 | 86.6% | 90 min | 0.86% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 463 | 86.3% | 50 min | 0.22% | A+ |
SkyWest leads Southwest by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on LGB 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 Long Beach to Salt Lake City
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LGB → SLCLong Beach to Salt Lake City | SkyWest Airlines | 93.1% | 93.1% | 0.00% | 5am–8am, Tue | OO 3793 16:50 |
| 2. BUR → SLCBurbank to Salt Lake City | SkyWest Airlines | 91.8% | 92.3% | 0.52% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. BUR → SLCBurbank to Salt Lake City | Delta Air Lines | 91.6% | 92.1% | 0.51% | 5am–8am, Tue | DL 2582 07:00 |
| 4. ONT → SLCOntario to Salt Lake City | Delta Air Lines | 90.7% | 91.7% | 1.11% | 8am–11am, Wed | DL 2708 06:00 |
| 5. LAX → SLCLos Angeles to Salt Lake City | SkyWest Airlines | 89.6% | 89.6% | 0.00% | 11am–2pm, Mon | — |
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 1,552 flights.
- 5am–8am368 flights92.9%
- 8am–11am176 flights96.0%
- 11am–2pm469 flights86.6%
- 2pm–5pm246 flights88.6%
- 5pm–8pm281 flights86.8%
- 8pm–5am12 flights—
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 86.6% on time against 96.0% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 469 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,552 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
June is the worst month at 84.0% on time, 11 points below January, the best at 94.6%. 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 138 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 91.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 85.4%. 6 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 68% of the 12,000 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.
- 68%Carrier
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%Extreme weather
- 3%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 68%, 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 8,482 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 12,439 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.32%, 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 3.8% 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 588 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 87.4% on time across 1,552 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 1,552 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: take the 8am–11am departure, avoid June if the dates are flexible, and if two carriers are within a few dollars of each other, SkyWest is the one with the record behind it. None of that guarantees an on-time arrival; it moves the odds by 9 points, which is the most any booking decision can do. 1,544 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LGB to SLC questions
How often is LGB 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 10.9% of the 1,552 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LGB to SLC?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 93.1% on time across 622 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 86.3%, a gap of 7 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 LGB to SLC?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 96.0% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 86.6%, 9 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 June delays on LGB to SLC?
June is the weakest month at 84.0% on time, compared with 94.6% in January. Across the year that is 11 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 LGB — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on LGB to SLC93.1%
- Delta Air Lines on LGB to SLC86.6%
- Southwest Airlines on LGB to SLC86.3%
- LGB to LAS, a related route81.3%
- DEN to SLC, a related route77.5%
- LGB to SMF, a related route87.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record93.1%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record86.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record86.3%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. LGB to SLC and SLC to LGB 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.