Carrier route record
DLRNO→SLC
Delta Air Lines · Reno to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 730
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 61%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on RNO to SLC 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 730 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's RNO to SLC record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 125 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 727 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.27%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
90.1%
Every carrier on RNO to SLC, 1,201 flights
These figures cover 730 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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
Delta against every carrier on RNO to SLC
Delta flew 730 of the 1,201 flights on RNO to SLC, most of the route. Its 89.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 90.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 90.4% to Delta at 89.8%.
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 471 | 90.4% | 78 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 730 | 89.8% | 86 min | 0.27% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on RNO to SLC
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Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
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 730 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights90.4%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm349 flights89.9%
- 2pm–5pm16 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5am–8am window is the strongest at 90.4% on time. The full set of windows spans half a point.
Across the year
Delta on RNO to SLC through the year
December is the weak month at 77.0% on time, against 98.3% 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. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 95.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 86.5%, a spread of 9 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on RNO to SLC runs when it is late
Delta on RNO to SLC often beats the schedule: 258 of 727 completed flights, 35%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 74 late arrivals split 24 under half an hour, 20 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 30 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early258 flights35.5%
- Within 15 min395 flights54.3%
- 15–29 min late24 flights3.3%
- 30–59 min late20 flights2.8%
- 1–2 hours late15 flights2.1%
- 2+ hours late15 flights2.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 727 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 84 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 26 still arrived on time. 16 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on RNO to SLC
The latest arrival of the period was on 29 December 2025, 11 hours 19 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 29 December 2025 | 11 hours 19 minutes | Carrier |
| 24 February 2026 | 6 hours 44 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 February 2026 | 4 hours 43 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 March 2026 | 4 hours 40 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 October 2025 | 4 hours 25 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 46% of the 6,364 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,364 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 6,364 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,947 of the 6,364 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.27%, 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 4.1% 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 86.1% on time across 730 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 730 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 Delta on RNO to SLC
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 730 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 89.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 727 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.