Carrier route record
DLSLC→PDX
Delta Air Lines · Salt Lake City to Portland
- Flights
- 1,697
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 71%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on SLC to PDX 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 55 minutes. That rests on 1,697 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's SLC to PDX record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 99 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,678 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.12%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
87.7%
Every carrier on SLC to PDX, 2,382 flights
These figures cover 1,697 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
Delta against every carrier on SLC to PDX
Delta flew 1,697 of the 2,382 flights on SLC to PDX, most of the route. Its 87.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 87.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 97.8% to Frontier at 64.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 46 | 97.8% | 17 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 596 | 89.2% | 64 min | 0.50% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,697 | 87.5% | 55 min | 1.12% | A |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 43 | 64.3% | 117 min | 2.33% | D |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on SLC to PDX
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 1,697 flights.
- 5am–8am43 flights87.8%
- 8am–11am318 flights87.8%
- 11am–2pm365 flights88.4%
- 2pm–5pm363 flights87.3%
- 5pm–8pm245 flights85.8%
- 8pm–5am363 flights87.9%
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The overnight block holds up unusually well at 87.9% on time across 363 flights. Red-eyes fly into empty airspace and empty gates, and they are the first rotation of the aircraft's day rather than the last. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on SLC to PDX through the year
July is the worst month at 75.5% on time, 19 points below September, the best at 94.2%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 151 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 92.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.6%. 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 68% of the 11,000 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.
- 68%Carrier
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 68%, 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 7,815 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 11,481 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.12% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.8% 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 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. 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 90.3% on time across 1,698 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,697 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.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on SLC to PDX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 94.2% on time and July 75.5%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,678 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SLC to PDX, every carrier
- Delta on PDX to SLC, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on SLC to PDX89.2%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- US airports with the biggest gap between their best and worst month
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.