Route reliability record
SLC→SBA
Salt Lake City to Santa Barbara
- Flights
- 1,060
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 615 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns an A. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 16 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 50 minutes. That rests on 1,060 SLC to SBA flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly SLC to SBA: a 8pm–5am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.3% of the time and Thursday flights 95.9%, against 93.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 16 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 158 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
93.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,042 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.04%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
94.8% on time across 903 flights
These figures cover 1,060 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 SBA
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 903 | 94.8% | 48 min | 0.78% | A+ |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 157 | 84.9% | 60 min | 2.55% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on SLC to SBA
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.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 1,060 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am334 flights94.3%
- 11am–2pm31 flights—
- 2pm–5pm330 flights89.9%
- 5pm–8pm2 flights—
- 8pm–5am363 flights96.3%
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The overnight block holds up unusually well at 96.3% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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.
February is the weak month at 82.5% on time, against 98.9% in June. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 95.9% on time and Saturday the weakest at 88.1%. 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 67% of the 3,572 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.
- 67%Carrier
- 15%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%Extreme weather
- 8%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 67%, 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 2,410 of the 3,572 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,572 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.04% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.66%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.1% 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 615 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 95.2% on time across 1,060 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,060 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in SBA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,060 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 93.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,042 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SLC to SBA questions
How often is SLC to SBA delayed?
About one flight in fifteen arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 6.6% of the 1,060 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is SLC to SBA compared with the rest of the country?
93.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 16 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SLC to SBA?
The 8pm–5am departure window is the strongest at 96.3% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 89.9%, 6 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 SBA?
February is the weakest month at 82.5% on time, compared with 98.9% in June. Across the year that is 16 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
- SBA to SLC — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on SLC to SBA94.8%
- Delta Air Lines on SLC to SBA84.9%
- SLC to DEN, a related route77.8%
- SFO to SBA, a related route80.1%
- SLC to PHX, a related route83.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record94.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record84.9%
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
Direction matters. SLC to SBA and SBA 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.