Route reliability record
SLC→RNO
Salt Lake City to Reno
- Flights
- 1,195
- Period
- July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,195 SLC to RNO flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 465 at 91.4% on time.
Best time to fly SLC to RNO: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 98.8% of the time and Wednesday flights 92.3%, against 87.8% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 102 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,191 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.17%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
91.4% on time across 465 flights
These figures cover 1,195 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 RNO
The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 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 | 465 | 91.4% | 57 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 730 | 85.6% | 69 min | 0.27% | A+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 91.4%, 6 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.
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 | 91.4% | 91.4% | 0.00% | 8am–11am, Wed | OO 3732 16:00 |
| 2. SLC → RNOSalt Lake City to Reno | Delta Air Lines | 85.4% | 85.6% | 0.27% | 11am–2pm, Wed | 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 15 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am22 flights—
- 8am–11am86 flights98.8%
- 11am–2pm365 flights87.1%
- 2pm–5pm357 flights89.3%
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am364 flights84.0%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 98.8% of the time, against 84.0% for the overnight window. That is 15 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
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 117 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 84.7%. 8 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 62% of the 9,469 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.
- 62%Carrier
- 16%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 62%, 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 5,836 of the 9,469 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,469 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.17%, 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 4.2% 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.
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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 90.1% on time across 1,195 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 1,195 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. 1,191 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 12.2% of the 1,195 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SLC to RNO?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 91.4% on time across 465 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 85.6%, 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 RNO?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 98.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 84.0%, 15 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 RNO91.4%
- Delta Air Lines on SLC to RNO85.6%
- SLC to DEN, a related route77.8%
- LAS to RNO, a related route79.7%
- SLC to PHX, a related route83.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record91.4%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record85.6%
- 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 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.