Carrier route record

DLSLC→LGB

Delta Air Lines · Salt Lake City to Long Beach

Flights: 468
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 30%
Carriers: 3

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

Delta on SLC to LGB 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 12 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 468 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 621 at 93.5% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's SLC to LGB record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 116 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

89.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 465 completed flights

Avg delay

61 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.64%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

87.4%

Every carrier on SLC to LGB, 1,552 flights

These figures cover 468 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

Delta against every carrier on SLC to LGB

Delta flew 468 of the 1,552 flights on SLC to LGB, about 30% of it. Its 89.2% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 87.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 93.5% to Southwest at 77.3%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 93.5% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 77.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 463 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on SLC to LGB
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	621	93.5%	42 min	0.00%	A+
Delta Air Lines (this page)	468	89.2%	61 min	0.64%	A+
Southwest Airlines	463	77.3%	40 min	0.22%	B+

The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 16 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 16 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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 468 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm365 flights89.8%
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am103 flights87.3%

Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 11am–2pm window is the strongest at 89.8% on time. The full set of windows spans 3 points.

Across the year

Delta on SLC to LGB through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, July worst

July is the worst month at 80.6% on time, 19 points below September, the best at 100.0%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 60 flights.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 93.9% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 85.3%. 9 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 55% of the 3,028 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.

Carrier
55%
Late-arriving aircraft
32%
National Airspace System
6%
Extreme weather
6%

The largest share of delay minutes, 55%, 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 1,675 of the 3,028 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,028 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.64%, 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 3.4% 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 588 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 86.6% on time across 467 flights, within 3 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. 468 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 LGB

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 468 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 89.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 465 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

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.

Key figures