Carrier route record
DLSLC→SNA
Delta Air Lines · Salt Lake City to Santa Ana
- Flights
- 1,655
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 89%
- 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 SNA 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 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,655 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's SLC to SNA record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 64 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,642 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.48%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
84.2%
Every carrier on SLC to SNA, 1,854 flights
These figures cover 1,655 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
Delta against every carrier on SLC to SNA
Delta flew 1,655 of the 1,854 flights on SLC to SNA, most of the route. Its 84.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 84.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 86.5% to Delta at 84.0%. Two 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.
| 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 (this page) | 1,655 | 84.0% | 58 min | 0.48% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on SLC to SNA
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 13 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–11am288 flights91.2%
- 11am–2pm360 flights78.3%
- 2pm–5pm360 flights82.9%
- 5pm–8pm205 flights82.8%
- 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 78.3% on time against 91.2% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on SLC to SNA through the year
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 78.0%. March is the strongest month at 92.4%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 14 points. October was the busiest month here, with 150 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 79.7%. 9 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 66% of the 15,000 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.
- 66%Carrier
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 66%, 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 9,982 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 15,196 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.48%, 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 3.3% 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 1,655 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 1,655 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 SNA
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. March runs 92.4% on time and October 78.0%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of October before you think about anything else. 1,642 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SLC to SNA, every carrier
- Delta on SNA to SLC, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on SLC to SNA86.5%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- John Wayne Airport (SNA) delay statistics
- 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
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.