Route reliability record
SBA→SLC
Santa Barbara to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 1,062
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 615 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns an A+. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 17 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 1,062 SBA to SLC flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.
Best time to fly SBA to SLC: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 98.6% of the time and Thursday flights 97.3%, against 94.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 17 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 169 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
94.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,052 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.94%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
94.8% on time across 934 flights
These figures cover 1,062 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 15 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 SBA to SLC
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 | 934 | 94.8% | 96 min | 0.54% | A+ |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 128 | 89.4% | 74 min | 3.91% | A− |
Flight by flight
Flights on SBA 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.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 1,062 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights98.6%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm365 flights92.8%
- 2pm–5pm153 flights88.9%
- 5pm–8pm179 flights92.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 98.6% of the time, against 88.9% for the afternoon 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 SBA 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 SBA to SLC, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 98.6% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 88.9%, a real gap of 9.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am98.6%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm92.8%
- 2–5pm88.9%
- 5–8pm92.7%
- 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.
August is the worst month at 84.9% on time, 14 points below November, the best at 98.8%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 97.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 90.3%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Extreme weather accounts for 54% of the 5,544 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Extreme weather
- 28%Carrier
- 16%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 54% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 9.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 5,544 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 0.94% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.9% 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 615 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 runs 92.0% on time across 1,062 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,062 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in SLC after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,062 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 94.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,052 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SBA to SLC questions
How often is SBA to SLC delayed?
Roughly one flight in fifteen arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 5.8% of the 1,062 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is SBA to SLC compared with the rest of the country?
94.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 17 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SBA to SLC?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 98.6% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 88.9%, 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 August delays on SBA to SLC?
August is the weakest month at 84.9% on time, compared with 98.8% in November. 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 SBA — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on SBA to SLC94.8%
- Delta Air Lines on SBA to SLC89.4%
- SBA to SFO, a related route61.3%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- SBA to PHX, a related route85.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record94.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record89.4%
- 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. SBA to SLC and SLC to SBA 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.