Carrier route record
DLSNA→SLC
Delta Air Lines · Santa Ana to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 1,606
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 86%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,606 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 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 92 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,593 completed flights
Avg delay
99 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.68%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
86.3%
Every carrier on SNA to SLC, 1,859 flights
These figures cover 1,606 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on SNA to SLC
Delta flew 1,606 of the 1,859 flights on SNA to SLC, most of the route. Its 86.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 86.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 86.5% 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,606 | 86.5% | 99 min | 0.68% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 101 | 86.0% | 58 min | 0.99% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 151 | 84.7% | 100 min | 0.66% | B+ |
| Allegiant Airthin sample | 1 | 0.0% | 150 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on SNA to SLC
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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.
- 5am–8am313 flights91.3%
- 8am–11am413 flights91.9%
- 11am–2pm335 flights79.3%
- 2pm–5pm34 flights60.6%
- 5pm–8pm511 flights85.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.9% 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 511 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 91.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 81.6%, a spread of 10 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on SNA to SLC runs when it is late
Delta on SNA to SLC often beats the schedule: 628 of 1,593 completed flights, 39%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 215 late arrivals split 62 under half an hour, 60 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 93 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early628 flights39.4%
- Within 15 min750 flights47.1%
- 15–29 min late62 flights3.9%
- 30–59 min late60 flights3.8%
- 1–2 hours late46 flights2.9%
- 2+ hours late47 flights3.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,593 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
80 of 279 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 29% of them. Only 16 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on SNA to SLC
The latest arrival of the period was on 25 June 2026, 19 hours 13 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 25 June 2026 | 19 hours 13 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 December 2025 | 16 hours 22 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 October 2025 | 15 hours 9 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 November 2025 | 14 hours 44 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 September 2025 | 12 hours 53 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 50% of the 21,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%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. Across 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 41 to one. The split is drawn from 21,194 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 11,000 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.68%, below the national 1.89% 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
5.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.0% on time across 1,606 flights, 4 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,606 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. 1,593 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%
- SkyWest Airlines on SNA to SLC84.7%
- 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 7.05 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.