Carrier route record
DLSLC→DFW
Delta Air Lines · Salt Lake City to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,458
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 38%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on SLC to DFW lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,458 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on SLC to DFW from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,420 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.30%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.6%
Every carrier on SLC to DFW, 3,869 flights
These figures cover 1,458 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 DFW
Delta flew 1,458 of the 3,869 flights on SLC to DFW, about 38% of it. Its 80.4% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 80.4% to Frontier at 77.2%. Two 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,458 | 80.4% | 70 min | 1.30% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 9 | 77.8% | 46 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 2,213 | 77.5% | 103 min | 3.43% | B− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 189 | 77.2% | 80 min | 2.65% | B |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on SLC to DFW
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 12 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am250 flights85.2%
- 8am–11am361 flights86.1%
- 11am–2pm359 flights78.2%
- 2pm–5pm123 flights77.5%
- 5pm–8pm365 flights74.4%
- 8pm–5am—
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 86.1% of the time, against 74.4% for the evening window. That is 12 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on SLC to DFW through the year
August is the worst month at 66.7% on time, 24 points below February, the best at 91.0%. 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 124 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.9%. 17 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 49% of the 19,000 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.
- 49%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, 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 9,472 of the 19,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 19,401 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.30% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.30%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.2% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 989 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 runs 81.5% on time across 1,459 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,458 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on SLC to DFW
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 91.0% on time and August 66.7%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,420 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SLC to DFW, every carrier
- Delta on DFW to SLC, the return leg
- American Airlines on SLC to DFW77.5%
- Frontier Airlines on SLC to DFW77.2%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.