Carrier route record
DLSBA→SLC
Delta Air Lines · Santa Barbara to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 157
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 15%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on SBA 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 157 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's SBA to SLC record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 132 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 152 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.18%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
95.2%
Every carrier on SBA to SLC, 1,060 flights
These figures cover 157 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on SBA to SLC
Delta flew 157 of the 1,060 flights on SBA to SLC, about 15% of it. Its 90.8% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 95.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 96.0% to Delta at 90.8%.
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 | 903 | 96.0% | 105 min | 1.00% | A |
| Delta Air Lines (this page)thin sample | 157 | 90.8% | 74 min | 3.18% | A− |
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 157 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Delta's SBA to SLC record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 90.8% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Delta on SBA to SLC through the year
- Jul–Sep 202554 flights90.7%
- Oct–Dec 202584 flights90.1%
- Jan–Mar 202619 flights—
Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 90.8% on time across 157 flights.
Split by quarter, Delta on SBA to SLC logged 54 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 84 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 19 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 90.8% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 95% of the 1,029 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.
- 95%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Carrier
- 2%National Airspace System
95% 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 1,029 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 95 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 1,029 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.18%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
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. 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 84.9% on time across 157 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 157 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 SBA to SLC
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.18% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5pm–8pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 152 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.