Route reliability record
SLC→SBA
Salt Lake City to Santa Barbara
- Flights
- 1,062
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 615 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 15 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,062 SLC to SBA flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly SLC to SBA: a 8pm–5am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.1% of the time and Thursday flights 95.3%, against 92.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 15 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 147 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
92.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,048 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.75%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
92.9% on time across 934 flights
These figures cover 1,062 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 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 | 934 | 92.9% | 53 min | 0.43% | A+ |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 128 | 85.4% | 68 min | 3.12% | A− |
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.
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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 1,062 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am334 flights93.1%
- 11am–2pm31 flights—
- 2pm–5pm332 flights87.0%
- 5pm–8pm2 flights—
- 8pm–5am363 flights96.1%
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The overnight block holds up unusually well at 96.1% 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.
Explore
Filter SLC to SBA 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 SBA, the best departure window is 8pm–5am at 96.1% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 87.0%, a real gap of 9.1 points. All US flights leaving 8pm–5am ran 70.1%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am93.1%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm87.0%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am96.1%
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 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 95.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 85.4%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 61% of the 4,691 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 61%Carrier
- 20%Extreme weather
- 11%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 20% 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 3.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 4,691 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 61%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,856 of the 4,691 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.75%, 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 2.9% 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 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.
The return leg runs 94.2% on time across 1,062 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. 1,062 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. 1,062 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 92.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,048 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 twelve arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 8.0% of the 1,062 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is SLC to SBA compared with the rest of the country?
92.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 15 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 96.1% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 87.0%, 9 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 SBA92.9%
- Delta Air Lines on SLC to SBA85.4%
- SLC to DEN, a related route79.0%
- SFO to SBA, a related route78.2%
- SLC to PHX, a related route83.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record92.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record85.4%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.