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DelayAtlas

Carrier route record

DLSLCFCA

Delta Air Lines · Salt Lake City to Kalispell

Flights
412
Period
July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route
36%
Carriers
2
A+GRADE

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on SLC to FCA earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 412 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's SLC to FCA record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 87 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

Key figures

On time

86.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 408 completed flights

Avg delay

80 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.49%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

90.5%

Every carrier on SLC to FCA, 1,159 flights

These figures cover 412 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 FCA

Delta flew 412 of the 1,159 flights on SLC to FCA, about 36% of it. Its 86.3% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 90.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 92.8% to Delta at 86.3%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on SLC to FCA
AirlineFlightsOn timeAvg delayCancelledGrade
SkyWest Airlines74792.8%46 min0.80%A+
Delta Air Lines (this page)41286.3%80 min0.49%A+

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on SLC to FCA

Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

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 412 flights.

  • 5am–8am
  • 8am–11am47 flights93.6%
  • 11am–2pm
  • 2pm–5pm
  • 5pm–8pm
  • 8pm–5am365 flights85.3%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 93.6% of the time, against 85.3% for the overnight window. That is 8 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on SLC to FCA through the year

On-time rate by calendar month81JF91M88A98M85J87J94A97S84ON67D
Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.May best, December worst

December is the weak month at 66.7% on time, against 97.6% in May. 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 60 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 91.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 80.4%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

On-time rate by day of the week82.8Mon91.5Tue86.2Wed86.0Thu80.4Fri90.5Sat86.0Sun
Monday: 82.8 percent on time. Tuesday: 91.5 percent on time. Wednesday: 86.2 percent on time. Thursday: 86.0 percent on time. Friday: 80.4 percent on time. Saturday: 90.5 percent on time. Sunday: 86.0 percent on time

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

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 4,491 reported delay minutes.

  • Extreme weather
    37%
  • Carrier
    32%
  • Late-arriving aircraft
    27%
  • National Airspace System
    4%

Extreme weather accounts for 37% 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 5.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 4,491 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 costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% 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 87.8% on time across 412 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. 412 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.

What to do with this

Booking Delta on SLC to FCA

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 412 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 86.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 408 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Related

Where to go next

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.