Route reliability record
SLC→SNA
Salt Lake City to Santa Ana
- Flights
- 1,854
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 588 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 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,854 SLC to SNA flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly SLC to SNA: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 88.5%, against 84.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 66 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,835 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.70%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
84.0% on time across 1,655 flights
These figures cover 1,854 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 SNA
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 101 | 86.5% | 68 min | 3.96% | A− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 98 | 85.6% | 63 min | 1.02% | A |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,655 | 84.0% | 58 min | 0.48% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on SLC to SNA
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Salt Lake City to Santa Ana
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 5 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SLC → LGBSalt Lake City to Long Beach | SkyWest Airlines | 93.5% | 93.5% | 0.00% | 2pm–5pm, Mon | OO 3793 15:05 |
| 2. SLC → LAXSalt Lake City to Los Angeles | SkyWest Airlines | 89.6% | 89.6% | 0.00% | 5pm–8pm, Wed | — |
| 3. SLC → BURSalt Lake City to Burbank | SkyWest Airlines | 89.0% | 89.5% | 0.52% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. SLC → LGBSalt Lake City to Long Beach | Delta Air Lines | 88.6% | 89.2% | 0.64% | 11am–2pm, Fri | — |
| 5. SLC → LAXSalt Lake City to Los Angeles | Frontier Airlines | 87.0% | 88.4% | 1.54% | 8am–11am, Tue | F9 1267 10:15 |
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 12 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–8am78 flights84.0%
- 8am–11am330 flights91.1%
- 11am–2pm370 flights78.9%
- 2pm–5pm399 flights82.7%
- 5pm–8pm313 flights83.5%
- 8pm–5am364 flights85.6%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 78.9% on time against 91.1% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 399 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 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.
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 78.3%. March is the strongest month at 92.2%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 14 points. March was the busiest month here, with 169 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.6%. 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 64% of the 17,000 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.
- 64%Carrier
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 64%, 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 11,000 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 16,952 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.70%, 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.6% 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 588 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 86.9% on time across 1,855 flights, within 3 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 1,854 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 SNA 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. March runs 92.2% on time and October 78.3%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of October before you think about anything else. 1,835 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SLC to SNA questions
How often is SLC to SNA delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.8% of the 1,854 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is SLC to SNA compared with the rest of the country?
84.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SLC to SNA?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 91.1% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 78.9%, 12 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 October delays on SLC to SNA?
October is the weakest month at 78.3% on time, compared with 92.2% in March. Across the year that is 14 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
- SNA to SLC — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- John Wayne Airport (SNA) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on SLC to SNA86.5%
- Delta Air Lines on SLC to SNA84.0%
- SLC to DEN, a related route77.8%
- SFO to SNA, a related route80.3%
- SLC to PHX, a related route83.9%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record86.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record85.6%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record84.0%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. SLC to SNA and SNA 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.