Route reliability record
TUS→SLC
Tucson to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 1,112
- Period
- September 2025 to August 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 16 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,112 TUS to SLC flights, with a median arrival 17 minutes early.
Best time to fly TUS to SLC: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 97.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 95.5%, against 92.8% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 16 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 155 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
92.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,105 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.27%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
92.9% on time across 1,087 flights
These figures cover 1,112 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 17 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on TUS 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 Airlines | 1,087 | 92.9% | 75 min | 0.18% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 25 | 87.5% | 36 min | 4.00% | A− |
Flight by flight
Flights on TUS 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 15 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am303 flights97.7%
- 8am–11am74 flights95.8%
- 11am–2pm365 flights95.3%
- 2pm–5pm138 flights82.4%
- 5pm–8pm232 flights87.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 97.7% of the time, against 82.4% for the afternoon window. That is 15 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter TUS to SLC by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On TUS to SLC, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 97.7% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 82.4%, a wide gap of 15.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am97.7%
- 8–11am95.8%
- 11am–2pm95.3%
- 2–5pm82.4%
- 5–8pm87.4%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,112 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
October is the best month on the calendar at 97.8% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 103 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 95.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 90.7%, a spread of 5 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 72% of the 5,901 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 72%Carrier
- 24%Extreme weather
- 3%National Airspace System
- 1%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 24% 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 4.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 5,901 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 72%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,228 of the 5,901 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.27%, 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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.
The return leg runs 91.4% on time across 1,112 flights, within about a point 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 SLC after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: take the 5am–8am departure, avoid November if the dates are flexible, and if two carriers are within a few dollars of each other, SkyWest is the one with the record behind it. None of that guarantees an on-time arrival; it moves the odds by 15 points, which is the most any booking decision can do. 1,105 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TUS to SLC questions
How often is TUS to SLC delayed?
About one flight in fifteen arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 7.2% of the 1,112 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is TUS to SLC compared with the rest of the country?
92.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 16 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on TUS to SLC?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 97.7% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 82.4%, 15 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 November delays on TUS to SLC?
November is the weakest month at 88.4% on time, compared with 97.8% in October. Across the year that is 9 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 TUS — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- TUS to PHX, a related route83.6%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- TUS to DEN, a related route83.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record92.9%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record87.5%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. TUS to SLC and SLC to TUS are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed TUS to SLC’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.