Route reliability record
SLC→COS
Salt Lake City to Colorado Springs
- Flights
- 721
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 411 mi
- Carriers
- 1
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 about 50 minutes. That rests on 721 SLC to COS flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly SLC to COS: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 94.2%, 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 717 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.14%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
91.9% on time across 721 flights
These figures cover 721 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 COS
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 721 | 91.9% | 50 min | 0.14% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on SLC to COS
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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Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 721 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am153 flights93.5%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm204 flights90.6%
- 5pm–8pm9 flights—
- 8pm–5am355 flights91.8%
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8am–11am window is the strongest at 93.5% on time. The full set of windows spans 3 points.
Explore
Filter SLC to COS 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 COS, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 93.5% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 90.6%, a narrow gap of 2.9 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am93.5%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm90.6%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am91.8%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 13 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 83.6% on time, 13 points below September, the best at 96.7%. 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 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 94.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 87.5%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 58% of the 2,924 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Carrier
- 31%Extreme weather
- 11%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 31% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 5.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,924 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,686 of the 2,924 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.14%, 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 2.2% 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 411 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 91.9% on time across 721 flights, within half a point 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. 721 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 COS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 721 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 91.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 717 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SLC to COS questions
How often is SLC to COS 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 721 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is SLC to COS compared with the rest of the country?
91.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 15 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SLC to COS?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 93.5% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 90.6%, 3 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 COS?
August is the weakest month at 83.6% on time, compared with 96.7% in September. Across the year that is 13 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
- COS to SLC — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- SLC to DEN, a related route79.0%
- DEN to COS, a related route76.5%
- SLC to PHX, a related route83.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record91.9%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. SLC to COS and COS 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.