Carrier route record

F9SLC→SNA

Frontier Airlines · Salt Lake City to Santa Ana

Flights: 101
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 5%
Carriers: 3

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

Frontier on SLC to SNA earns an A−. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 101 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's SLC to SNA record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 89 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 96 completed flights

Avg delay

68 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.96%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

84.2%

Every carrier on SLC to SNA, 1,854 flights

These figures cover 101 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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

Frontier against every carrier on SLC to SNA

Frontier flew 101 of the 1,854 flights on SLC to SNA, about 5% of it. Its 86.5% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 84.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 86.5% to Delta at 84.0%. 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 SNA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin 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+

Departure window

When Frontier runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 101 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am41 flights90.0%
11am–2pm10 flights—
2pm–5pm39 flights81.1%
5pm–8pm11 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.0% of the time, against 81.1% for the afternoon window. That is 9 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 41 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on SLC to SNA through the year

Oct–Dec 202527 flights—
Jan–Mar 202657 flights92.9%
Apr–Jun 202617 flights—

Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 86.5% on time across 101 flights.

Split by quarter, Frontier on SLC to SNA logged 27 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 57 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 17 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 86.5% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 67% of the 880 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
67%
Carrier
22%
National Airspace System
11%

67% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 880 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 67 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 880 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.0% on time here.

Cancellations run at 3.96%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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 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 86.0% on time across 101 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 101 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 Frontier on SLC to SNA

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.96% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 96 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