Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
- Salt Lake City International Airport was the top U.S. airport for on-time flights in 2024, according to Cirium.
- Delta Air Lines, a major presence at the airport, ranked third globally for efficiency among all airlines.
- Other Delta hubs fared well in remaining on-time among U.S. airports.
SALT LAKE CITY — If you want to remain on time in the U.S., flying in or out of Utah's capital might be your best bet, a major aviation analytics firm says.
Cirium released its annual report of on-time flights on Thursday, listing Salt Lake City International Airport — with about 84% of its departures and 85% of its arrivals on time — as the top-performing airport in the nation last year and the fourth-best in the world.
Only Riyadh King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Lima Jorge Chavez International Airport in Callao, Peru; and Mexico City Benito Juarez International Airport in Mexico City rated higher.
"Fashionably late? Never heard of it. Here at SLC, we are 'fashionably on-time,'" Salt Lake City International Airport officials posted on social media, sharing a link to the report.
Salt Lake City International Airport's success appears to be largely influenced by its tie to Delta Air Lines, which accounted for about 70% of the airport's total traffic in 2023 when a record 26.9 million people passed through the facility.
Cirium named Delta the third-most efficient airline in the world in 2024, as it remained on time for about 83.5% of its more than 1.7 million worldwide flights. Experts marveled at the airline's success before and after it was heavily impacted by the CrowdStrike breach that led to thousands of canceled flights in July last year.
"Despite that setback, Delta's performance the other 51 weeks of the year exceeded rivals by significant margins," Scott McCartney, an adjunct professor at Duke University and Cirium aviation consultant, wrote in the annual report.
Salt Lake City is one of Delta's many hubs across the world. It even opened a $50 million flight operations training facility in Salt Lake City last month as it continues to grow its presence in Utah.
While Delta's largest hub, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, failed to make the outlet's Top 20 performing airports in the world, New York LaGuardia Airport, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, Los Angeles International Airport and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport — some of its other key hubs — did make the list.
Meanwhile, Aeromexico, which operates seven weekly flights connecting Salt Lake City to Guadalajara, Mexico, was rated the top-performing airline in the world. About 86.7% of its nearly 200,000 flights were on time last year. Only United Airlines (80.1%) also landed in the Top 10 globally among airlines that operate some service in Salt Lake City.
Airport officials have yet to release its complete 2024 travel statistics, but last year was on pace to be 6% busier based on numbers updated through October.
