Carrier route record
WNLGB→SLC
Southwest Airlines · Long Beach to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 480
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 31%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on LGB to SLC earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 50 minutes. That rests on 480 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 560 at 92.1% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's LGB to SLC record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 78 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 477 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.21%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
88.7%
Every carrier on LGB to SLC, 1,569 flights
These figures cover 480 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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
Southwest against every carrier on LGB to SLC
Southwest flew 480 of the 1,569 flights on LGB to SLC, about 31% of it. Its 85.1% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 88.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 92.1% to Southwest at 85.1%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 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 | 560 | 92.1% | 91 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 529 | 88.3% | 90 min | 1.13% | A |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 480 | 85.1% | 51 min | 0.21% | A+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 92.1%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 28 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am7 flights—
- 8am–11am181 flights96.1%
- 11am–2pm90 flights87.5%
- 2pm–5pm115 flights80.0%
- 5pm–8pm60 flights68.3%
- 8pm–5am27 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 96.1% of the time, against 68.3% for the evening window. That is 28 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 181 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on LGB to SLC through the year
June is the worst month at 67.4% on time, 33 points below November, 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. February was the busiest month here, with 46 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 92.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 78.5%, a spread of 14 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on LGB to SLC runs when it is late
The 71 late arrivals split 25 under half an hour, 24 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 22 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early100 flights21.0%
- Within 15 min306 flights64.2%
- 15–29 min late25 flights5.2%
- 30–59 min late24 flights5.0%
- 1–2 hours late15 flights3.1%
- 2+ hours late7 flights1.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 477 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 100 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 32 still arrived on time. Only 3 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on LGB to SLC
The latest arrival of the period was on 9 August 2026, 3 hours 3 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in December 2025.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 9 August 2026 | 3 hours 3 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 13 December 2025 | 2 hours 17 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 December 2025 | 2 hours 10 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 30 April 2026 | 2 hours 10 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 December 2025 | 2 hours 8 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 83% of the 3,619 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 83%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Carrier
- 3%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
83% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,619 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 83 to one. The split is drawn from 3,619 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 96.1% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.21%, 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 costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% 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 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.6% on time across 480 flights, 9 points below 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 480 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 Southwest on LGB to SLC
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 480 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 85.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 477 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGB to SLC, every carrier
- Southwest on SLC to LGB, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on LGB to SLC92.1%
- Delta Air Lines on LGB to SLC88.3%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.