Carrier route record
OOSLC→SFO
SkyWest Airlines · Salt Lake City to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,011
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 29%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on SLC to SFO draws a D. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,011 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 504 at 68.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so SkyWest on SLC to SFO runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 134 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 997 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.19%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
63.4%
Every carrier on SLC to SFO, 3,433 flights
These figures cover 1,011 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on SLC to SFO
SkyWest flew 1,011 of the 3,433 flights on SLC to SFO, about 29% of it. Its 63.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 63.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 68.2% to Delta at 61.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 68.2% of the time; Delta Air Lines manages 61.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,712 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 504 | 68.2% | 70 min | 0.20% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 206 | 65.2% | 97 min | 2.43% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 1,011 | 63.9% | 75 min | 1.19% | D |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,712 | 61.6% | 52 min | 0.93% | D+ |
United leads Delta by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When SkyWest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 54 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am276 flights89.9%
- 8am–11am241 flights36.2%
- 11am–2pm115 flights58.8%
- 2pm–5pm203 flights73.7%
- 5pm–8pm21 flights—
- 8pm–5am155 flights52.0%
Scale runs 30% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.9% of the time, against 36.2% for the morning window. That is 54 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 276 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on SLC to SFO through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 86.4% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. April was the busiest month here, with 138 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 76.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 53.1%, a spread of 23 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on SLC to SFO runs when it is late
SkyWest on SLC to SFO often beats the schedule: 294 of 997 completed flights, 29%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 360 late arrivals split 88 under half an hour, 136 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 136 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early294 flights29.5%
- Within 15 min343 flights34.4%
- 15–29 min late88 flights8.8%
- 30–59 min late136 flights13.6%
- 1–2 hours late76 flights7.6%
- 2+ hours late60 flights6.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 997 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 317 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 23 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 66 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at SFO.
The worst days
Worst days for SkyWest on SLC to SFO
The latest arrival of the period was on 2 June 2026, 11 hours 29 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 2 June 2026 | 11 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 April 2026 | 9 hours 38 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 5 July 2026 | 8 hours 33 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 November 2025 | 8 hours 6 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 26 December 2025 | 6 hours 19 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 57% of the 27,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 57%National Airspace System
- 29%Carrier
- 13%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
57% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 15,000 minutes out of 27,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 27,141 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.19% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.20%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
13.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 599 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.9% on time across 1,008 flights, 12 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 12 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,011 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.
What to do with this
Booking SkyWest on SLC to SFO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,011 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 63.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 997 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SLC to SFO, every carrier
- SkyWest on SFO to SLC, the return leg
- United Airlines on SLC to SFO68.2%
- Frontier Airlines on SLC to SFO65.2%
- Delta Air Lines on SLC to SFO61.6%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.