Route reliability record
SNA→SLC
Santa Ana to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 1,855
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 588 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route 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 an hour and a half. That rests on 1,855 SNA to SLC flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly SNA to SLC: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 91.8%, against 86.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 93 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,841 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.65%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
86.9% on time across 1,655 flights
These figures cover 1,855 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 SNA to SLC
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 Airlinesthin sample | 98 | 88.7% | 139 min | 1.02% | A |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,655 | 86.9% | 96 min | 0.60% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 101 | 86.0% | 58 min | 0.99% | A+ |
| Allegiant Airthin sample | 1 | 0.0% | 150 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on SNA to SLC
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 Santa Ana to Salt Lake City
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. LGB → SLCLong Beach to Salt Lake City | SkyWest Airlines | 93.1% | 93.1% | 0.00% | 5am–8am, Tue | OO 3793 16:50 |
| 2. BUR → SLCBurbank to Salt Lake City | SkyWest Airlines | 91.8% | 92.3% | 0.52% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. BUR → SLCBurbank to Salt Lake City | Delta Air Lines | 91.6% | 92.1% | 0.51% | 5am–8am, Tue | DL 2582 07:00 |
| 4. ONT → SLCOntario to Salt Lake City | Delta Air Lines | 90.7% | 91.7% | 1.11% | 8am–11am, Wed | DL 2708 06:00 |
| 5. LAX → SLCLos Angeles to Salt Lake City | SkyWest Airlines | 89.6% | 89.6% | 0.00% | 11am–2pm, Mon | — |
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 30 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–8am313 flights92.0%
- 8am–11am464 flights91.1%
- 11am–2pm344 flights80.4%
- 2pm–5pm51 flights62.0%
- 5pm–8pm683 flights86.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.0% of the time, against 62.0% for the afternoon window. That is 30 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 683 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.
December is the weak month at 79.2% on time, against 93.2% in April. 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 169 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.1%. 10 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 51% of the 23,000 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.
- 51%Carrier
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
39% 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 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 39 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 23,250 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, 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 12,000 of the 23,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.65%, 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
5.3% 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 an hour and a half, 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 84.2% on time across 1,854 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 1,855 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 SLC 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. April runs 93.2% on time and December 79.2%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,841 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SNA to SLC questions
How often is SNA to SLC delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 13.1% of the 1,855 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is SNA to SLC compared with the rest of the country?
86.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 9 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SNA to SLC?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.0% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 62.0%, 30 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 December delays on SNA to SLC?
December is the weakest month at 79.2% on time, compared with 93.2% in April. 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
- SLC to SNA — the return legseparate record
- John Wayne Airport (SNA) delay statistics
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on SNA to SLC86.9%
- Frontier Airlines on SNA to SLC86.0%
- SNA to SFO, a related route70.3%
- DEN to SLC, a related route77.5%
- SNA to PHX, a related route82.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record88.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record86.9%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record86.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. SNA to SLC and SLC to SNA 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.