Carrier route record

OOAUS→DEN

SkyWest Airlines · Austin to Denver

Flights: 490
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 9%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on AUS to DEN lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 490 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 549 at 84.8% on time.

Frontier Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 84.8% on time across 549 flights.

On time

81.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 487 completed flights

Avg delay

70 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.61%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.4%

Every carrier on AUS to DEN, 5,310 flights

These figures cover 490 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

SkyWest against every carrier on AUS to DEN

SkyWest flew 490 of the 5,310 flights on AUS to DEN, about 9% of it. Its 81.5% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 84.8% to Southwest at 72.7%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Frontier Airlines arrives on time 84.8% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 72.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,356 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on AUS to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlines	549	84.8%	92 min	0.55%	B+
United Airlines	1,915	82.7%	69 min	1.20%	B
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	490	81.5%	70 min	0.61%	B+
Southwest Airlines	2,356	72.7%	56 min	0.59%	C+

The spread between Frontier and Southwest is 12 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 12 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 21 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am252 flights91.2%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm4 flights—
2pm–5pm44 flights76.7%
5pm–8pm190 flights69.8%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.2% of the time, against 69.8% for the evening window. That is 21 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 252 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on AUS to DEN through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.January best, June worst

June is the worst month at 70.0% on time, 21 points below January, the best at 90.6%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. December was the busiest month here, with 75 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 88.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 73.5%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 63% of the 6,256 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.

Carrier
63%
National Airspace System
23%
Extreme weather
14%
Late-arriving aircraft
0%

Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 6,256 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 63%, 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 3,937 of the 6,256 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.61%, 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

7.2% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 775 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.5% on time across 491 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 490 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking SkyWest on AUS to DEN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 490 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 81.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 487 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures