Route reliability record
SLC→SMF
Salt Lake City to Sacramento
- Flights
- 2,165
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 532 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 2,165 SLC to SMF flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 1,503 at 86.4% on time.
Best time to fly SLC to SMF: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 97.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 90.0%, against 84.8% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 75 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,144 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.92%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
86.4% on time across 1,503 flights
These figures cover 2,165 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 SMF
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,503 | 86.4% | 66 min | 1.20% | A |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 77 | 84.4% | 59 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 585 | 80.8% | 58 min | 0.34% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 86.4%, 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 SMF
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 Sacramento
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 → SMFSalt Lake City to Sacramento | Delta Air Lines | 85.4% | 86.4% | 1.20% | 8am–11am, Tue | DL 1367 08:05 |
| 2. SLC → SMFSalt Lake City to Sacramento | Southwest Airlines | 80.5% | 80.8% | 0.34% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 21 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am174 flights97.1%
- 8am–11am409 flights91.6%
- 11am–2pm371 flights84.6%
- 2pm–5pm424 flights82.0%
- 5pm–8pm310 flights76.2%
- 8pm–5am477 flights82.7%
Scale runs 70% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 97.1% of the time, against 76.2% for the evening window. That is 21 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 477 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SLC to SMF 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 SMF, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 97.1% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 76.2%, a wide gap of 20.9 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am97.1%
- 8–11am91.6%
- 11am–2pm84.6%
- 2–5pm82.0%
- 5–8pm76.2%
- 8pm–5am82.7%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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.
August is the worst month at 73.6% on time, 17 points below May, the best at 91.0%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 206 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 81.9%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 50% of the 21,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Carrier
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 5%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 to one. The split is drawn from 20,511 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 10,000 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.92% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.05%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 532 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 87.0% on time across 2,165 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 2,165 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 SMF 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. May runs 91.0% on time and August 73.6%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 2,144 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SLC to SMF questions
How often is SLC to SMF delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.2% of the 2,165 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 SMF?
Delta Air Lines leads at 86.4% on time across 1,503 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 80.8%, 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 SMF?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 97.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 76.2%, 21 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 August delays on SLC to SMF?
August is the weakest month at 73.6% on time, compared with 91.0% in May. Across the year that is 17 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
- SMF to SLC — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Sacramento International (SMF) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on SLC to SMF86.4%
- Southwest Airlines on SLC to SMF80.8%
- SLC to DEN, a related route79.0%
- LAX to SMF, a related route84.8%
- SLC to PHX, a related route83.5%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record86.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record84.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record80.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. SLC to SMF and SMF 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.