Carrier route record

DLSLC→AUS

Delta Air Lines · Salt Lake City to Austin

Flights: 1,081
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 61%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on SLC to AUS lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,081 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's SLC to AUS record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 50 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,071 completed flights

Avg delay

66 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.56%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.1%

Every carrier on SLC to AUS, 1,783 flights

These figures cover 1,081 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 SLC to AUS

Delta flew 1,081 of the 1,783 flights on SLC to AUS, most of the route. Its 82.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 87.8% to Southwest at 78.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on SLC to AUS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	232	87.8%	53 min	0.86%	A+
Delta Air Lines (this page)	1,081	82.6%	66 min	0.56%	B+
Southwest Airlines	470	78.2%	50 min	0.64%	B+

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on SLC to AUS

DL 272817:1582.4% · 363 flights

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 1,081 flights.

5am–8am21 flights—
8am–11am338 flights85.1%
11am–2pm114 flights86.0%
2pm–5pm244 flights78.5%
5pm–8pm363 flights82.4%
8pm–5am1 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 86.0% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 78.5%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on SLC to AUS through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.February best, July worst

July is the worst month at 56.0% on time, 35 points below February, the best at 90.5%. 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 93 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 76.1%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 58% of the 12,000 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.

Carrier
58%
National Airspace System
20%
Late-arriving aircraft
19%
Extreme weather
4%

The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 7,027 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 12,174 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.56%, below the national 1.81% 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

5.9% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,086 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 86.5% on time across 1,081 flights, 4 points above 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. 1,081 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 SLC to AUS

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,081 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 82.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,071 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

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.

Key figures