Carrier route record

DLSLC→SMF

Delta Air Lines · Salt Lake City to Sacramento

Flights: 1,509
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 70%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on SLC to SMF 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 1,509 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's SLC to SMF record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 97 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,495 completed flights

Avg delay

63 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.86%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

85.7%

Every carrier on SLC to SMF, 2,158 flights

These figures cover 1,509 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

Delta against every carrier on SLC to SMF

Delta flew 1,509 of the 2,158 flights on SLC to SMF, most of the route. Its 87.3% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 85.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 87.3% to Southwest at 81.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on SLC to SMF
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	1,509	87.3%	63 min	0.86%	A+
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	73	84.9%	57 min	0.00%	B+
Southwest Airlines	576	81.7%	57 min	0.35%	B+

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on SLC to SMF

Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 15 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am3 flights—
8am–11am370 flights93.2%
11am–2pm317 flights85.4%
2pm–5pm347 flights83.6%
5pm–8pm108 flights78.5%
8pm–5am364 flights88.9%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 93.2% of the time, against 78.5% for the evening 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 370 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on SLC to SMF through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.May best, December worst

December is the weak month at 81.7% on time, against 92.2% in May. 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 147 flights.

Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 90.2% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 85.0%. 5 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 69% of the 12,000 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.

Carrier
69%
Late-arriving aircraft
22%
National Airspace System
6%
Extreme weather
2%

The largest share of delay minutes, 69%, 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 8,276 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 11,921 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.86%, 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 costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% 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 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. 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 89.7% on time across 1,509 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 1,509 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.

What to do with this

Booking Delta on SLC to SMF

Put together: avoid the 5pm–8pm departure. It runs 78.5% on time against 93.2% for the 8am–11am slot, and that 15 points is the largest single thing you control here. Southwest Airlines is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 1,495 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures