Carrier route record

OOBIL→DEN

SkyWest Airlines · Billings to Denver

Flights: 1,052
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 59%
Carriers: 2

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

SkyWest on BIL to DEN lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six 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 1,052 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's BIL to DEN record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 43 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

81.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,034 completed flights

Avg delay

82 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.43%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.3%

Every carrier on BIL to DEN, 1,782 flights

These figures cover 1,052 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Carrier by carrier

SkyWest against every carrier on BIL to DEN

SkyWest flew 1,052 of the 1,782 flights on BIL to DEN, most of the route. Its 81.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 82.7% to SkyWest at 81.9%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on BIL to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	730	82.7%	69 min	0.00%	B+
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	1,052	81.9%	82 min	1.43%	B

Flight by flight

SkyWest flight numbers on BIL to DEN

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 28 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–8am219 flights95.4%
8am–11am255 flights90.9%
11am–2pm107 flights88.6%
2pm–5pm151 flights67.1%
5pm–8pm320 flights69.8%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.4% of the time, against 67.1% for the afternoon window. That is 28 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 320 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on BIL to DEN through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.October best, July worst

August is the worst month at 70.9% on time, 21 points below October, the best at 91.4%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 121 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 77.0%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 15,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
32%
National Airspace System
31%
Carrier
29%
Extreme weather
7%

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 95.4% on time here. The split is drawn from 15,233 reported delay minutes.

No single cause dominates. late-arriving aircraft at 32%, national airspace system at 31% and carrier at 29% split the 15,000 reported delay minutes between them. An even spread like this usually means the operation is running close to its designed capacity with no one obvious weak point, and it is the hardest pattern for a traveller to route around.

Cancellations sit at 1.43% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.4% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 455 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 81.7% on time across 1,052 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,052 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 BIL to DEN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,052 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 81.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,034 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