Route reliability record
SLC→FCA
Salt Lake City to Kalispell
- Flights
- 1,159
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 532 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 13 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,159 SLC to FCA flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 747 at 92.8% on time.
Best time to fly SLC to FCA: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.7% of the time and Saturday flights 95.2%, against 90.5% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 129 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,147 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.69%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
92.8% on time across 747 flights
These figures cover 1,159 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 FCA
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 92.8% of the time; Delta Air Lines manages 86.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 412 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 747 | 92.8% | 46 min | 0.80% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 412 | 86.3% | 80 min | 0.49% | A+ |
SkyWest leads Delta by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on SLC to FCA
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Salt Lake City to Kalispell
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 → FCASalt Lake City to Kalispell | SkyWest Airlines | 92.1% | 92.8% | 0.80% | 11am–2pm, Sat | OO 3801 09:25 |
| 2. SLC → FCASalt Lake City to Kalispell | Delta Air Lines | 85.9% | 86.3% | 0.49% | 8am–11am, Tue | DL 1464 21:30 |
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 10 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am379 flights94.9%
- 11am–2pm69 flights95.7%
- 2pm–5pm346 flights90.1%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am365 flights85.3%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 95.7% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 85.3%. 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 379 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,159 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
December is the weak month at 85.2% on time, against 96.7% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. June was the busiest month here, with 119 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 95.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 88.2%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 6,914 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Carrier
- 34%Extreme weather
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 34% 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 5.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 6,914 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, 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 2,887 of the 6,914 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.69%, 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 2.6% 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 532 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 91.6% on time across 1,159 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 1,159 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in FCA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: avoid the 8pm–5am departure. It runs 85.3% on time against 95.7% for the 11am–2pm slot, and that 10 points is the largest single thing you control here. SkyWest Airlines is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 1,147 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SLC to FCA questions
How often is SLC to FCA delayed?
About one flight in ten arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 9.5% of the 1,159 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SLC to FCA?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 92.8% on time across 747 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 86.3%, a gap of 7 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 FCA?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 95.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 85.3%, 10 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 December delays on SLC to FCA?
December is the weakest month at 85.2% on time, compared with 96.7% in September. Across the year that is 12 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
- FCA to SLC — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on SLC to FCA92.8%
- Delta Air Lines on SLC to FCA86.3%
- SLC to DEN, a related route77.8%
- DEN to FCA, a related route82.1%
- SLC to PHX, a related route83.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record92.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record86.3%
- 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
Direction matters. SLC to FCA and FCA 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.