Route reliability record
SLC→CLT
Salt Lake City to Charlotte
- Flights
- 901
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,727 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 901 SLC to CLT flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 365 at 85.3% on time.
Best time to fly SLC to CLT: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 89.4%, against 83.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 63 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 888 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.11%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
85.3% on time across 365 flights
These figures cover 901 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 SLC to CLT
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 365 | 85.3% | 33 min | 1.37% | A |
| American Airlines | 536 | 82.4% | 90 min | 0.93% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 85.3%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on SLC to CLT
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 Salt Lake City to Charlotte
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SLC → CLTSalt Lake City to Charlotte | Delta Air Lines | 84.1% | 85.3% | 1.37% | 8am–11am, Wed | DL 2070 10:30 |
| 2. SLC → CLTSalt Lake City to Charlotte | American Airlines | 81.6% | 82.4% | 0.93% | 8pm–5am, Mon | — |
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 15 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am338 flights86.7%
- 11am–2pm243 flights79.5%
- 2pm–5pm65 flights71.9%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am255 flights86.3%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 86.7% of the time, against 71.9% for the afternoon window. That is 15 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 338 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SLC to CLT 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 SLC to CLT, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 86.7% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 71.9%, a wide gap of 14.8 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am86.7%
- 11am–2pm79.5%
- 2–5pm71.9%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am86.3%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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.
August is the worst month at 68.8% on time, 25 points below November, the best at 93.4%. 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 89.4% on time and Saturday the weakest at 80.7%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 47% of the 10,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Carrier
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 to one. The split is drawn from 10,133 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 47%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,717 of the 10,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.11% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.33%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.4% 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.
At 1,727 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg runs 81.9% on time across 901 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 901 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in CLT after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 901 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 83.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 888 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SLC to CLT questions
How often is SLC to CLT delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.4% of the 901 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 SLC to CLT?
Delta Air Lines leads at 85.3% on time across 365 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 82.4%, a gap of 3 points. 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 SLC to CLT?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 86.7% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 71.9%, 15 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 August delays on SLC to CLT?
August is the weakest month at 68.8% on time, compared with 93.4% in November. Across the year that is 25 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
- CLT to SLC — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on SLC to CLT85.3%
- American Airlines on SLC to CLT82.4%
- SLC to DEN, a related route79.0%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.6%
- SLC to PHX, a related route83.5%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record85.3%
- American Airlines on-time record82.4%
- 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. SLC to CLT and CLT to SLC 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.