Route reliability record
SLC→OAK
Salt Lake City to Oakland
- Flights
- 1,621
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 588 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,621 SLC to OAK flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,074 at 91.8% on time.
Best time to fly SLC to OAK: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 98.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 95.6%, against 90.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 129 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,617 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.19%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
91.8% on time across 1,074 flights
These figures cover 1,621 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SLC to OAK
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,074 | 91.8% | 54 min | 0.19% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 547 | 87.0% | 57 min | 0.18% | A+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 91.8%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on SLC to OAK
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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Salt Lake City to Oakland
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SLC → SJCSalt Lake City to San Jose | SkyWest Airlines | 91.9% | 92.0% | 0.15% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. SLC → OAKSalt Lake City to Oakland | SkyWest Airlines | 91.6% | 91.8% | 0.19% | 11am–2pm, Tue | OO 3797 22:50 |
| 3. SLC → OAKSalt Lake City to Oakland | Southwest Airlines | 86.8% | 87.0% | 0.18% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. SLC → SJCSalt Lake City to San Jose | Delta Air Lines | 85.3% | 85.7% | 0.43% | 11am–2pm, Tue | DL 1272 22:50 |
| 5. SLC → SFOSalt Lake City to San Francisco | United Airlines | 68.1% | 68.2% | 0.20% | 11am–2pm, Sat | — |
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 23 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am109 flights98.1%
- 8am–11am468 flights91.4%
- 11am–2pm159 flights89.3%
- 2pm–5pm380 flights90.3%
- 5pm–8pm86 flights75.6%
- 8pm–5am419 flights90.0%
Scale runs 65% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 98.1% of the time, against 75.6% for the evening window. That is 23 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 468 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SLC to OAK by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On SLC to OAK, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 98.1% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 75.6%, a wide gap of 22.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am98.1%
- 8–11am91.4%
- 11am–2pm89.3%
- 2–5pm90.3%
- 5–8pm75.6%
- 8pm–5am90.0%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,621 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
February is the weak month at 85.8% on time, against 96.6% 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. October was the busiest month here, with 150 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 95.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 86.7%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 58% of the 8,738 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Carrier
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%Extreme weather
- 6%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 8,738 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,041 of the 8,738 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.19%, below the national 1.89% 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 3.0% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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.
The return leg runs 87.8% on time across 1,621 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,621 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 OAK after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: avoid the 5pm–8pm departure. It runs 75.6% on time against 98.1% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 23 points is the largest single thing you control here. SkyWest Airlines is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 1,617 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SLC to OAK questions
How often is SLC to OAK 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 9.8% of the 1,621 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SLC to OAK?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 91.8% on time across 1,074 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 87.0%, a gap of 5 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 OAK?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 98.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 75.6%, 23 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 February delays on SLC to OAK?
February is the weakest month at 85.8% on time, compared with 96.6% in September. Across the year that is 11 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
- OAK to SLC — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Oakland International (OAK) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on SLC to OAK91.8%
- Southwest Airlines on SLC to OAK87.0%
- SLC to DEN, a related route79.0%
- SAN to OAK, a related route72.9%
- SLC to PHX, a related route83.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record91.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record87.0%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. SLC to OAK and OAK 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.