Route reliability record
RNO→SLC
Reno to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 1,201
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 422 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 13 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,201 RNO to SLC flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 471 at 90.4% on time.
Best time to fly RNO to SLC: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Monday. Flights in that window arrived on time 98.2% of the time and Monday flights 93.8%, against 90.1% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 128 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,198 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.17%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
90.4% on time across 471 flights
These figures cover 1,201 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
Which airline is most reliable on RNO to SLC
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point 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 | 471 | 90.4% | 78 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 730 | 89.8% | 86 min | 0.27% | A+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 90.4%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on RNO 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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Reno 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. RNO → SLCReno to Salt Lake City | SkyWest Airlines | 90.4% | 90.4% | 0.00% | 8am–11am, Sun | — |
| 2. RNO → SLCReno to Salt Lake City | Delta Air Lines | 89.6% | 89.8% | 0.27% | 5am–8am, Mon | DL 1650 06:00 |
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 10 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am365 flights90.4%
- 8am–11am113 flights98.2%
- 11am–2pm349 flights89.9%
- 2pm–5pm16 flights—
- 5pm–8pm358 flights88.0%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 98.2% of the time, against 88.0% for the evening window. That is 10 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter RNO 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 RNO to SLC, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 98.2% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 88.0%, a wide gap of 10.2 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am90.4%
- 8–11am98.2%
- 11am–2pm89.9%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm88.0%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 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.
February is the weak month at 82.1% on time, against 95.6% in May. 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 120 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 93.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 86.6%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 60% of the 9,856 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 60%Carrier
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 60%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,895 of the 9,856 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,856 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.17%, 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.5% 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.
At 422 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 87.7% on time across 1,201 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 1,201 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. May runs 95.6% on time and February 82.1%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of February before you think about anything else. 1,198 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RNO to SLC questions
How often is RNO to SLC delayed?
About one flight in ten arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 9.9% of the 1,201 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on RNO to SLC?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 90.4% on time across 471 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 89.8%, a gap of half a point. 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 RNO to SLC?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 98.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 88.0%, 10 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 February delays on RNO to SLC?
February is the weakest month at 82.1% on time, compared with 95.6% in May. Across the year that is 14 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 RNO — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on RNO to SLC90.4%
- Delta Air Lines on RNO to SLC89.8%
- RNO to LAS, a related route81.4%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- RNO to LAX, a related route87.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record90.4%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record89.8%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. RNO to SLC and SLC to RNO 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.