Route reliability record
SLC→RNO
Salt Lake City to Reno
- Flights
- 1,201
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 422 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,201 SLC to RNO flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 471 at 90.2% on time.
Best time to fly SLC to RNO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 90.1%, against 87.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 104 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,198 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.17%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
90.2% on time across 471 flights
These figures cover 1,201 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 RNO
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 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 | 471 | 90.2% | 67 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 730 | 86.1% | 64 min | 0.27% | A+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 90.2%, 4 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 RNO
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 Reno
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 → RNOSalt Lake City to Reno | SkyWest Airlines | 90.2% | 90.2% | 0.00% | 8am–11am, Mon | OO 3732 16:00 |
| 2. SLC → RNOSalt Lake City to Reno | Delta Air Lines | 85.9% | 86.1% | 0.27% | 11am–2pm, Sat | DL 1595 11:55 |
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 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am73 flights95.9%
- 8am–11am65 flights95.4%
- 11am–2pm340 flights87.0%
- 2pm–5pm358 flights88.0%
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am364 flights85.1%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.9% of the time, against 85.1% for the overnight 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SLC to RNO 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 RNO, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 95.9% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 85.1%, a wide gap of 10.8 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am95.9%
- 8–11am95.4%
- 11am–2pm87.0%
- 2–5pm88.0%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am85.1%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 76.1% on time, against 97.2% 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 120 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 85.5%, a spread of 5 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 58% of the 9,546 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Carrier
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%National Airspace System
- 13%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 9,546 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,546 of the 9,546 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.17%, 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 4.3% 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.
At 422 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 90.1% on time across 1,201 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 1,201 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 RNO after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 97.2% on time and December 76.1%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,198 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SLC to RNO questions
How often is SLC to RNO 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 12.3% of the 1,201 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 RNO?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 90.2% on time across 471 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 86.1%, a gap of 4 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 RNO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 85.1%, 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 December delays on SLC to RNO?
December is the weakest month at 76.1% on time, compared with 97.2% in September. Across the year that is 21 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
- RNO to SLC — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on SLC to RNO90.2%
- Delta Air Lines on SLC to RNO86.1%
- SLC to DEN, a related route79.0%
- LAS to RNO, a related route78.9%
- SLC to PHX, a related route83.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record90.2%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record86.1%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. SLC to RNO and RNO 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.