Route reliability record
SLC→CVG
Salt Lake City to Cincinnati
- Flights
- 820
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,450 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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 820 SLC to CVG flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly SLC to CVG: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 92.9%, against 88.1% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 105 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 815 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.49%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
88.1% on time across 820 flights
These figures cover 820 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SLC to CVG
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 820 | 88.1% | 57 min | 0.49% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on SLC to CVG
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.
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 820 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am362 flights91.3%
- 11am–2pm138 flights84.8%
- 2pm–5pm5 flights—
- 5pm–8pm315 flights86.0%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 84.8% on time against 91.3% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 362 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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.
July is the worst month at 78.6% on time, 17 points below February, the best at 95.2%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 87 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.9% on time and Saturday the weakest at 82.6%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 60% of the 5,534 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.
- 60%Carrier
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 60%, 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 3,340 of the 5,534 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 5,534 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.49%, 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.6% 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 1,450 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 83.7% on time across 821 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 820 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 CVG after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 820 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 88.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 815 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SLC to CVG questions
How often is SLC to CVG delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 11.9% of the 820 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is SLC to CVG compared with the rest of the country?
88.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 11 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 CVG?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 91.3% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 84.8%, 7 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 SLC to CVG?
July is the weakest month at 78.6% on time, compared with 95.2% in February. Across the year that is 17 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
- CVG to SLC — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- SLC to DEN, a related route77.8%
- ORD to CVG, a related route72.2%
- SLC to PHX, a related route83.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record88.1%
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
Direction matters. SLC to CVG and CVG 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.