Route reliability record
SLC→TUS
Salt Lake City to Tucson
- Flights
- 1,112
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 600 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route 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 14 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 45 minutes. That rests on 1,112 SLC to TUS flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly SLC to TUS: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.3% of the time and Saturday flights 94.8%, against 91.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 140 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,109 completed flights
Avg delay
46 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.18%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
91.7% on time across 1,087 flights
These figures cover 1,112 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SLC to TUS
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,087 | 91.7% | 44 min | 0.18% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 25 | 88.0% | 102 min | 0.00% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on SLC to TUS
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.
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 10 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–8am—
- 8am–11am377 flights96.3%
- 11am–2pm4 flights—
- 2pm–5pm357 flights92.7%
- 5pm–8pm9 flights—
- 8pm–5am365 flights86.0%
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 96.3% of the time, against 86.0% for the overnight window. That is 10 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 377 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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.
January is the weak month at 83.2% on time, against 97.8% in June. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 103 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 94.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 87.3%. 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 69% of the 4,230 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.
- 69%Carrier
- 22%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
- 3%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 22% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 4,230 reported delay minutes.
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 2,919 of the 4,230 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.18%, 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 1.7% 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 600 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 93.7% on time across 1,112 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 1,112 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 TUS 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. June runs 97.8% on time and January 83.2%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,109 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SLC to TUS questions
How often is SLC to TUS delayed?
About one flight in twelve arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 8.4% of the 1,112 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 45 minutes on average.
How reliable is SLC to TUS compared with the rest of the country?
91.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 14 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SLC to TUS?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 96.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 86.0%, 10 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 January delays on SLC to TUS?
January is the weakest month at 83.2% on time, compared with 97.8% in June. Across the year that is 15 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
- TUS to SLC — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- SLC to DEN, a related route77.8%
- PHX to TUS, a related route82.3%
- SLC to PHX, a related route83.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record91.7%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record88.0%
- 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 TUS and TUS 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.