Route reliability record
SFO→SLC
San Francisco to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 3,431
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 599 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 3,431 SFO to SLC flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,008 at 75.9% on time.
Best time to fly SFO to SLC: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 81.8%, against 75.0% for the route overall.
SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 75.9% on time across 1,008 flights.
Key figures
On time
75.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,394 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.02%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
75.9% on time across 1,008 flights
These figures cover 3,431 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SFO to SLC
The three carriers here are closely matched: about 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 | 1,008 | 75.9% | 68 min | 1.39% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,714 | 75.7% | 74 min | 0.93% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 503 | 74.7% | 57 min | 0.20% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 206 | 65.8% | 76 min | 1.94% | C |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 75.9%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on SFO 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 San Francisco to Salt Lake City
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SJC → SLCSan Jose to Salt Lake City | SkyWest Airlines | 94.0% | 94.1% | 0.15% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. OAK → SLCOakland to Salt Lake City | SkyWest Airlines | 93.9% | 94.1% | 0.19% | 5am–8am, Tue | OO 4061 05:55 |
| 3. SJC → SLCSan Jose to Salt Lake City | Delta Air Lines | 92.7% | 93.2% | 0.54% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 1314 06:00 |
| 4. OAK → SLCOakland to Salt Lake City | Southwest Airlines | 75.5% | 75.5% | 0.00% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 5. SFO → SLCSan Francisco to Salt Lake City | Delta Air Lines | 75.0% | 75.7% | 0.93% | 5am–8am, Tue | DL 1331 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 31 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am371 flights96.2%
- 8am–11am759 flights83.0%
- 11am–2pm660 flights66.8%
- 2pm–5pm453 flights65.2%
- 5pm–8pm1,031 flights72.5%
- 8pm–5am157 flights65.6%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.2% of the time, against 65.2% for the afternoon window. That is 31 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 1,031 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SFO 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 SFO to SLC, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 96.2% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 65.2%, a wide gap of 31.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am96.2%
- 8–11am83.0%
- 11am–2pm66.8%
- 2–5pm65.2%
- 5–8pm72.5%
- 8pm–5am65.6%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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.
June is the worst month at 61.8% on time, 26 points below March, the best at 88.2%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 324 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 68.8%, a spread of 13 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 59,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
51% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 59,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 36 to one. The split is drawn from 59,107 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 96.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.02% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.06%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 599 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 63.4% on time across 3,433 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,431 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. March runs 88.2% on time and June 61.8%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 3,394 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to SLC questions
How often is SFO to SLC delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 25.0% of the 3,431 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SFO to SLC?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 75.9% on time across 1,008 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 74.7%, a gap of about 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 SFO to SLC?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 96.2% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 65.2%, 31 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 June delays on SFO to SLC?
June is the weakest month at 61.8% on time, compared with 88.2% in March. Across the year that is 26 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 SFO — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on SFO to SLC75.9%
- Delta Air Lines on SFO to SLC75.7%
- United Airlines on SFO to SLC74.7%
- Frontier Airlines on SFO to SLC65.8%
- SFO to LAX, a related route70.9%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- SFO to SEA, a related route72.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record75.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record75.7%
- United Airlines on-time record74.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. SFO to SLC and SLC to SFO 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.