Route reliability record
SLC→OAK
Salt Lake City to Oakland
- Flights
- 1,670
- Period
- July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 55 minutes. That rests on 1,670 SLC to OAK flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,074 at 92.4% on time.
Best time to fly SLC to OAK: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 98.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 94.2%, 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 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 126 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,666 completed flights
Avg delay
53 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.18%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
92.4% on time across 1,074 flights
These figures cover 1,670 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 OAK
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 92.4% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 86.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 596 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,074 | 92.4% | 53 min | 0.19% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 596 | 86.2% | 52 min | 0.17% | A+ |
SkyWest leads Southwest by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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.
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 | 92.8% | 92.9% | 0.14% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. SLC → OAKSalt Lake City to Oakland | SkyWest Airlines | 92.2% | 92.4% | 0.19% | 11am–2pm, Tue | OO 3797 22:50 |
| 3. SLC → OAKSalt Lake City to Oakland | Southwest Airlines | 86.1% | 86.2% | 0.17% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. SLC → SJCSalt Lake City to San Jose | Delta Air Lines | 84.2% | 84.6% | 0.45% | 2pm–5pm, Tue | DL 1272 22:50 |
| 5. SLC → SFOSalt Lake City to San Francisco | United Airlines | 76.4% | 76.6% | 0.21% | 11am–2pm, Tue | — |
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 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am103 flights98.0%
- 8am–11am434 flights91.7%
- 11am–2pm211 flights91.0%
- 2pm–5pm373 flights91.7%
- 5pm–8pm101 flights75.2%
- 8pm–5am448 flights88.8%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 98.0% of the time, against 75.2% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 448 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,670 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. July was the busiest month here, with 150 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 94.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 87.6%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 52% of the 8,588 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.
- 52%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 11%Extreme weather
- 6%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 11% 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 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 8,588 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, 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 4,440 of the 8,588 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.18%, 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 2.7% 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 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 89.1% on time across 1,670 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 1,670 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 75.2% on time against 98.0% 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. 1,666 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 1,670 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SLC to OAK?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 92.4% on time across 1,074 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 86.2%, a gap of 6 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 98.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 75.2%, 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 OAK92.4%
- Southwest Airlines on SLC to OAK86.2%
- SLC to DEN, a related route77.8%
- LAS to OAK, a related route71.6%
- SLC to PHX, a related route83.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record92.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record86.2%
- 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 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.