Route reliability record
SJC→SLC
San Jose to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 1,794
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 584 mi
- Carriers
- 3
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 15 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,794 SJC to SLC flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 662 at 94.1% on time.
Best time to fly SJC to SLC: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 95.7%, against 91.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 15 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 146 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,785 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.39%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
94.1% on time across 662 flights
These figures cover 1,794 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 SJC to SLC
The two 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 | 662 | 94.1% | 86 min | 0.15% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 924 | 93.2% | 86 min | 0.54% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 208 | 78.7% | 56 min | 0.48% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 94.1%, 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 SJC 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 Jose 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. 3 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 13 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am365 flights94.7%
- 8am–11am409 flights94.6%
- 11am–2pm406 flights91.1%
- 2pm–5pm186 flights81.7%
- 5pm–8pm428 flights92.0%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.7% of the time, against 81.7% for the afternoon window. That is 13 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 428 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SJC 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 SJC to SLC, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 94.7% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 81.7%, a wide gap of 13.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am94.7%
- 8–11am94.6%
- 11am–2pm91.1%
- 2–5pm81.7%
- 5–8pm92.0%
- 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
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,794 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
July is the worst month at 88.1% on time, 8 points below January, the best at 96.0%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 169 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 95.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 89.6%, a spread of 6 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 57% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 57%Carrier
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 11,151 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 57%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 6,326 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.39%, 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 3.4% 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 584 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 86.7% on time across 1,796 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,794 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: take the 5am–8am departure, avoid July if the dates are flexible, and if two carriers are within a few dollars of each other, SkyWest is the one with the record behind it. None of that guarantees an on-time arrival; it moves the odds by 13 points, which is the most any booking decision can do. 1,785 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SJC to SLC questions
How often is SJC to SLC delayed?
About one flight in twelve arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 8.1% of the 1,794 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 SJC to SLC?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 94.1% on time across 662 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 93.2%, 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 SJC to SLC?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.7% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 81.7%, 13 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 July delays on SJC to SLC?
July is the weakest month at 88.1% on time, compared with 96.0% in January. Across the year that is 8 points between the best and worst months. The seasonal swing is modest enough that it should not decide when you travel.
Related
Where to go next
- SLC to SJC — the return legseparate record
- Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International (SJC) delay statistics
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on SJC to SLC94.1%
- Delta Air Lines on SJC to SLC93.2%
- Southwest Airlines on SJC to SLC78.7%
- SJC to SAN, a related route68.3%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- SJC to LAX, a related route85.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record94.1%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record93.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record78.7%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. SJC to SLC and SLC to SJC 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.