Route reliability record
SLC→PDX
Salt Lake City to Portland
- Flights
- 2,384
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 630 mi
- Carriers
- 4
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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 2,384 SLC to PDX flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 617 at 88.1% on time.
Best time to fly SLC to PDX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 93.9%, against 87.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 106 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,357 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.13%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
88.1% on time across 617 flights
These figures cover 2,384 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SLC to PDX
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 46 | 97.8% | 17 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 617 | 88.1% | 66 min | 0.49% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,695 | 87.9% | 53 min | 1.42% | A |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 26 | 65.4% | 50 min | 0.00% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 88.1%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on SLC to PDX
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 Portland
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SLC → PDXSalt Lake City to Portland | SkyWest Airlines | 87.7% | 88.1% | 0.49% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. SLC → PDXSalt Lake City to Portland | Delta Air Lines | 86.7% | 87.9% | 1.42% | 5am–8am, Tue | DL 1203 07:45 |
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 11 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am105 flights93.0%
- 8am–11am556 flights91.1%
- 11am–2pm569 flights88.8%
- 2pm–5pm404 flights87.8%
- 5pm–8pm384 flights82.1%
- 8pm–5am366 flights86.1%
Scale runs 75% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.0% of the time, against 82.1% for the evening window. That is 11 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 569 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SLC to PDX 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 PDX, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.0% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 82.1%, a wide gap of 10.9 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.0%
- 8–11am91.1%
- 11am–2pm88.8%
- 2–5pm87.8%
- 5–8pm82.1%
- 8pm–5am86.1%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 2,384 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
August is the worst month at 81.7% on time, 11 points below May, the best at 92.6%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 240 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 93.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 83.9%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 52% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. The split is drawn from 16,076 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 8,429 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.13% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.7% 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 630 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 89.1% on time across 2,383 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 2,384 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 PDX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: avoid the 5pm–8pm departure. It runs 82.1% on time against 93.0% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 11 points is the largest single thing you control here. SkyWest Airlines is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 2,357 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SLC to PDX questions
How often is SLC to PDX delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 12.1% of the 2,384 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 PDX?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 88.1% on time across 617 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 87.9%, a gap of half a point. 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 PDX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 82.1%, 11 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 August delays on SLC to PDX?
August is the weakest month at 81.7% on time, compared with 92.6% in May. 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
- PDX to SLC — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on SLC to PDX88.1%
- Delta Air Lines on SLC to PDX87.9%
- SLC to DEN, a related route79.0%
- SEA to PDX, a related route82.2%
- SLC to PHX, a related route83.5%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record97.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record88.1%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record87.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. SLC to PDX and PDX 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.