Carrier route record
OOCOS→DEN
SkyWest Airlines · Colorado Springs to Denver
- Flights
- 3,282
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 65%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on COS to DEN lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About 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 3,282 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 1,142 at 75.0% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on COS to DEN from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
81.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,226 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.68%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.8%
Every carrier on COS to DEN, 5,038 flights
These figures cover 3,282 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 COS to DEN
SkyWest flew 3,282 of the 5,038 flights on COS to DEN, most of the route. Its 81.3% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 81.3% to United at 72.9%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 3,282 | 81.3% | 75 min | 1.68% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,142 | 75.0% | 57 min | 0.35% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 614 | 72.9% | 81 min | 1.30% | C |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 75.0%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on COS 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 25 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am911 flights89.7%
- 8am–11am960 flights83.9%
- 11am–2pm642 flights80.9%
- 2pm–5pm202 flights77.2%
- 5pm–8pm552 flights64.3%
- 8pm–5am15 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.3% on time, against 89.7% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 960 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on COS to DEN through the year
July is the worst month at 66.6% on time, 23 points below November, the best at 89.6%. 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 325 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 78.6%. 6 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 45,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, 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 18,000 of the 45,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 44,939 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.68% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.03%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.5% 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 73 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.5% on time across 3,283 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,282 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 SkyWest on COS to DEN
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 89.6% on time and July 66.6%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,226 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- COS to DEN, every carrier
- SkyWest on DEN to COS, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on COS to DEN75.0%
- United Airlines on COS to DEN72.9%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.