Route reliability record
CYS→DEN
Cheyenne to Denver
- Flights
- 730
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 90 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 730 CYS to DEN flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly CYS to DEN: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 95.1%, against 85.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 86 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 722 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.96%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
85.9% on time across 730 flights
These figures cover 730 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on CYS to DEN
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 | 730 | 85.9% | 89 min | 0.96% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on CYS to DEN
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.
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Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 730 flights.
- 5am–8am363 flights87.2%
- 8am–11am2 flights—
- 11am–2pm45 flights88.4%
- 2pm–5pm320 flights84.2%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 11am–2pm window is the strongest at 88.4% on time. The full set of windows spans 4 points.
Explore
Filter CYS to DEN 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 CYS to DEN, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 88.4% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 84.2%, a narrow gap of 4.2 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am87.2%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm88.4%
- 2–5pm84.2%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
September is the best month on the calendar at 95.0% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. December was the busiest month here, with 63 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 95.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 79.2%, a spread of 16 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 9,038 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%Extreme weather
- 15%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 9,038 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,588 of the 9,038 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.96% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.14%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 90 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.0% on time across 730 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 730 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DEN after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 730 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 85.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 722 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CYS to DEN questions
How often is CYS to DEN delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.1% of the 730 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is CYS to DEN compared with the rest of the country?
85.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 9 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CYS to DEN?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 88.4% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 84.2%, 4 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 October delays on CYS to DEN?
October is the weakest month at 79.0% on time, compared with 95.0% in September. Across the year that is 16 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
- DEN to CYS — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- PHX to DEN, a related route76.7%
- SLC to DEN, a related route79.0%
- LAX to DEN, a related route81.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record85.9%
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
Direction matters. CYS to DEN and DEN to CYS are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.