Carrier route record
DLSNA→SLC
Delta Air Lines · Santa Ana to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 1,655
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 89%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on SNA to SLC 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 1,655 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's SNA to SLC 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 1,643 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.60%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
86.9%
Every carrier on SNA to SLC, 1,855 flights
These figures cover 1,655 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
Delta against every carrier on SNA to SLC
Delta flew 1,655 of the 1,855 flights on SNA to SLC, most of the route. Its 86.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 86.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 88.7% to Allegiant at 0.0%. Three 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 98 | 88.7% | 139 min | 1.02% | A |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 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
Delta flight numbers on SNA to SLC
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 31 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–11am413 flights91.4%
- 11am–2pm335 flights80.2%
- 2pm–5pm34 flights60.6%
- 5pm–8pm560 flights86.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% 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 60.6% for the afternoon window. That is 31 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 560 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on SNA to SLC through the year
January is the weak month at 78.9% on time, against 93.8% 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. October was the busiest month here, with 150 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.5%. 10 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 49% of the 21,000 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.
- 49%Carrier
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
41% 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 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 41 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 20,761 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, 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 10,000 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.60%, 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
5.4% 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 84.0% 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 SNA to SLC
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 93.8% on time and January 78.9%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,643 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SNA to SLC, every carrier
- Delta on SLC to SNA, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on SNA to SLC86.0%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- John Wayne Airport (SNA) delay statistics
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.