Carrier route record

OOSLC→MSO

SkyWest Airlines · Salt Lake City to Missoula

Flights: 592
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 56%
Carriers: 2

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

SkyWest on SLC to MSO 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 15 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 40 minutes. That rests on 592 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's SLC to MSO record is 15 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 150 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

92.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 581 completed flights

Avg delay

39 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.35%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

88.7%

Every carrier on SLC to MSO, 1,059 flights

These figures cover 592 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

SkyWest against every carrier on SLC to MSO

SkyWest flew 592 of the 1,059 flights on SLC to MSO, most of the route. Its 92.6% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 88.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 92.6% to Delta at 83.9%.

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 MSO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	592	92.6%	39 min	1.35%	A
Delta Air Lines	467	83.9%	97 min	0.43%	B+

Flight by flight

SkyWest flight numbers on SLC to MSO

Departure window

When SkyWest 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 592 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am197 flights95.2%
11am–2pm55 flights96.4%
2pm–5pm340 flights90.5%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 80% 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 96.4% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 90.5%. 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 340 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on SLC to MSO through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.June best, May worst

Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 89.3%. June is the strongest month at 98.3%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 9 points. August was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 96.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 86.6%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 69% of the 1,694 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
69%
Extreme weather
27%
National Airspace System
3%

Extreme weather accounts for 27% 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 4.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 1,694 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 69%, 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 1,177 of the 1,694 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.35% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.51%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.0% 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.

At 436 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 91.8% on time across 592 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 592 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 SkyWest on SLC to MSO

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 592 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 92.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 581 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