Carrier route record

WNSLC→BUR

Southwest Airlines · Salt Lake City to Burbank

Flights: 128
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 9%
Carriers: 3

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

Southwest on SLC to BUR sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 128 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 962 at 89.5% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on SLC to BUR runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 46 extra late arrivals.

On time

73.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 126 completed flights

Avg delay

49 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.78%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

86.0%

Every carrier on SLC to BUR, 1,484 flights

These figures cover 128 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on SLC to BUR

Southwest flew 128 of the 1,484 flights on SLC to BUR, about 9% of it. Its 73.0% on time is 13 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 86.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 89.5% to Southwest at 73.0%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 89.5% of the time; Delta Air Lines manages 81.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 394 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on SLC to BUR
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	962	89.5%	51 min	0.52%	A+
Delta Air Lines	394	81.6%	98 min	0.00%	B+
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	128	73.0%	49 min	0.78%	C+

SkyWest leads Delta by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Departure window

When Southwest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 17 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am13 flights—
11am–2pm56 flights79.6%
2pm–5pm51 flights62.7%
5pm–8pm8 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 79.6% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 62.7%. 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 56 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on SLC to BUR through the year

Jul–Sep 202550 flights70.0%
Oct–Dec 202549 flights71.4%
Jan–Mar 202629 flights—

Scale runs 60% to 75%. 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 73.0% on time across 128 flights.

Split by quarter, Southwest on SLC to BUR logged 50 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 49 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 29 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 73.0% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 79% of the 1,655 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
79%
National Airspace System
14%
Carrier
7%

79% 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 1,655 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 79 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 1,655 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.78%, 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 574 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 76.6% on time across 128 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. 128 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 Southwest on SLC to BUR

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 128 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 73.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 126 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