Route reliability record
ORD→SLC
Chicago to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 3,245
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,250 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 3,245 ORD to SLC flights, of which United Airlines flew 1,073 at 71.4% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to SLC: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 76.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 74.8%, against 68.6% for the route overall.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 71.4% on time across 1,073 flights.
Key figures
On time
68.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,193 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.39%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
71.4% on time across 1,073 flights
These figures cover 3,245 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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 ORD to SLC
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 71.4% of the time; American Airlines manages 64.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,045 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,073 | 71.4% | 66 min | 1.12% | C |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 77 | 71.1% | 92 min | 1.30% | C |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,014 | 70.4% | 109 min | 1.18% | C |
| American Airlines | 1,045 | 64.0% | 71 min | 1.91% | D |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 36 | 61.1% | 48 min | 0.00% | D+ |
United leads American by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on ORD 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Salt Lake City
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ORD → SLCChicago to Salt Lake City | United Airlines | 70.6% | 71.4% | 1.12% | 11am–2pm, Tue | — |
| 2. ORD → SLCChicago to Salt Lake City | Delta Air Lines | 69.6% | 70.4% | 1.18% | 8am–11am, Tue | DL 2231 07:20 |
| 3. ORD → SLCChicago to Salt Lake City | American Airlines | 62.8% | 64.0% | 1.91% | 2pm–5pm, Tue | — |
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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 21 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am352 flights75.2%
- 8am–11am838 flights76.2%
- 11am–2pm701 flights72.2%
- 2pm–5pm312 flights68.6%
- 5pm–8pm604 flights59.6%
- 8pm–5am438 flights54.9%
Scale runs 45% to 80%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 54.9% on time, against 76.2% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 838 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD 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 ORD to SLC, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 76.2% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 54.9%, a wide gap of 21.3 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am75.2%
- 8–11am76.2%
- 11am–2pm72.2%
- 2–5pm68.6%
- 5–8pm59.6%
- 8pm–5am54.9%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
December is the weak month at 55.6% on time, against 79.0% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 316 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.9%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 81,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 81,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 80,920 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 30,000 of the 81,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.39% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.22%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
12.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,250 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 74.9% on time across 3,246 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,245 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. September runs 79.0% on time and December 55.6%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 3,193 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to SLC questions
How often is ORD to SLC delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 31.4% of the 3,245 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to SLC?
United Airlines leads at 71.4% on time across 1,073 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 64.0%, 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 ORD to SLC?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 76.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 54.9%, 21 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 December delays on ORD to SLC?
December is the weakest month at 55.6% on time, compared with 79.0% in September. Across the year that is 23 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 ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- United Airlines on ORD to SLC71.4%
- Delta Air Lines on ORD to SLC70.4%
- American Airlines on ORD to SLC64.0%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- United Airlines on-time record71.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record71.1%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record70.4%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. ORD to SLC and SLC to ORD are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed ORD 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.