Carrier route record

OOPDX→SLC

SkyWest Airlines · Portland to Salt Lake City

Flights: 593
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 25%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on PDX 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 55 minutes. That rests on 593 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's PDX to SLC record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 77 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 592 completed flights

Avg delay

54 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.17%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

88.5%

Every carrier on PDX to SLC, 2,381 flights

These figures cover 593 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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

SkyWest against every carrier on PDX to SLC

SkyWest flew 593 of the 2,381 flights on PDX to SLC, about 25% of it. Its 85.3% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 88.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 93.6% to Frontier at 58.1%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on PDX to SLC
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Alaska Airlinesthin sample	47	93.6%	34 min	0.00%	A+
Delta Air Lines	1,698	90.3%	63 min	1.12%	A
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	593	85.3%	54 min	0.17%	A+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	43	58.1%	74 min	0.00%	D+

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 19 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am178 flights82.0%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm101 flights97.0%
2pm–5pm126 flights91.2%
5pm–8pm188 flights78.2%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 97.0% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 78.2%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 188 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on PDX to SLC through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, December worst

December is the weak month at 77.8% on time, against 93.3% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 89.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 81.2%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 49% of the 4,697 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.

Carrier
49%
Late-arriving aircraft
35%
National Airspace System
9%
Extreme weather
7%

35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 4,697 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 4,697 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, 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 2,322 of the 4,697 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.17%, 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 costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.2% 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 630 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 89.2% on time across 596 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 593 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 SkyWest on PDX to SLC

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 593 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 85.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 592 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures